Alignment and empowerment: The NY Giants' way established by Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll

EAST RUTHERFORD - The scene played out countless times this offseason.

The New York Giants assembled in their brand new meeting room created to streamline and modernize their player evaluation - those eligible for the NFL Draft, those on other rosters and their own - and the process often drew a crowd.

General manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll would lead the session, and that's no surprise considering the pair has been aligned philosophically since they got the jobs here.

They were not alone, however.

Assistant general manager Brandon Brown would be there. Director of player personnel Tim McDonnell and assistant director of player personnel Dennis Hickey, too. Director of pro scouting Chris Rossetti had a vital role.

On the coaching side, Daboll made sure one of his coordinators and a position coach was in attendance, too. At times, there were more, and the group was tasked by Schoen to follow what has become the Big Blue-print:

Be honest, work together and leave the ego at the door.

"At the end of the day, make the best decision you can for the team" is how Daboll put it.

'Becoming a problem solver': The next step in Daniel Jones' evolution as NY Giants QB

And for the Giants, this has become the mantra of sorts with Schoen and Daboll in charge, and one thing takes precedence above all else - The Team.

Not just the one Schoen and Daboll established between each other and the one they are putting together on the field, mind you, but behind the scenes as well. This is the way to success, they believe, and decades of working as integral members of the supporting cast brought a different perspective when Schoen and Daboll got to the top.

“Joe and Dabs set the tone, but the synergy runs a lot deeper than those two at the top,” Brown told NorthJersey.com. “When you feel like you’re on the same page, top to bottom, that’s a credit to the team they’ve built.”

Listen to the way Daboll praises McDonnell, Hickey and Rossetti for being part of a sounding board for him heading into his second season as coach of the Giants, his second as a head coach at any level.

Brown talked up defensive line coach Andre Patterson - the "Dr. Dre" of Big Blue, as he called him - for his involvement in the transformation of Dexter Lawrence's game last season and the "magical touch" in the scouting of seventh round pick Jordon Riley, who has taken the Giants by surprise with how he has developed.

Schoen preaches consensus, which is the way functional front offices and coaching staffs thrive in today's NFL.

The Giants have long talked the talk, but it's been a while since they truly embraced walking the walk.

Free agency. The draft. Trades. Player evaluation in all three aspects. Development.

NY Giants under pressure: These 5 players will face the most scrutiny heading into Week 1

Beyond the GM and the head coach, there is no one voice that carries more weight throughout the process.

“I think year one, it’s very time-consuming implementing your process and making sure everything’s being done the way you want it to be done,” Schoen said. “I don’t want to say you have to micromanage, but every step of the process is new. [This year] I’d say it was a well-oiled machine. People knew expectations, they knew their job responsibilities, they knew the process, so it was much smoother."

Schoen is completely transparent with how he wants to build the roster: athletic traits, premium positions, franchise players and cornerstones developed from within. Daboll is open with his staff about defining what they want at each position, and that, in turn, makes the life of the personnel and scouting departments easier when seeking talent.

Schoen and Daboll have communicated this to everyone, and in all departments. The buy-in is essentially automatic when you go through a debut campaign the way the Giants did last fall by winning nine games plus a victory on the road in the playoffs to set themselves up for greater expectations when the new season kicks off Sunday night at MetLife Stadium against the Dallas Cowboys.

Daboll empowers his coordinators and assistant coaches to take initiative and be bold in their roles. This isn't a bow-down-to-the-head coach scenario. The scouts and the coaches work in sync at every level of this process.

"It’s such a collaborative process that we go through, and the one thing that you don’t want is – you just don’t want, 'Yes sir, this is the way, you see it this way, I see it the same exact way,’" Daboll said. "You want people to have opinions."

Here's the reality of what could have been for the Giants had Schoen taken the job as GM and decided five years of losing for the franchise called for a complete overhaul.

So many demanded Giants ownership clean house just weeks prior to Joe Judge and Dave Gettleman being ushered out of the organization, when weeks later Schoen and Daboll were hired to fix what had become one of the league's laughingstocks.

"He could've torn that whole thing down to the studs, brought in his guys and not looked back," one NFL personnel executive told NorthJersey.com this summer when asked about Schoen's approach with the Giants' rebuild. "What Joe did is commit to the evaluation of everything, changing what needed to be changed and trusting his vision for how this was going to get turned around."

When Daboll put together his coaching staff, he used a unique interview process, and that has continued. Each time a new position coach was hired, that assistant became part of the hiring committee, so to speak. Jerome Henderson worked with Daboll in Cleveland and with the Jets, and he was hired prior to Wink Martindale becoming defensive coordinator.

So when Daboll interviewed Martindale, Henderson was part of the interview. Each coach that was on staff got a vote for the new hire, and that continued this year when the Giants added Jeff Nixon as running backs coach, Chris Smith as assistant offensive line coach and, most recently, Mike "Pops" Adams as assistant special teams coach.

“If I ever got the chance as head coach, I wanted to make it a very inclusive hiring process," Daboll said. "Everyone would have ownership in the hiring, that would provide checks and balances, and the staff would feel part of it."

Schoen negotiated and reached lucrative extensions with Daniel Jones, Dexter Lawrence and Andrew Thomas. He executed a trade for Darren Waller, a deal that has helped change the complexion of the offense, while maneuvering in the NFL Draft to nab cornerback Tae Banks in the first round and wide receiver Jalin Hyatt in the third round.

Within the last two weeks, the Giants have acquired former Top 10 pick Isaiah Simmons from Arizona - they'll play him at inside linebacker - and outside linebacker Boogie Basham from Buffalo. Basham credited Schoen's influence when he was the assistant GM with the Bills for his being drafted by Buffalo in the second round.

"Those decisions are never on one person, I'll just say that," Schoen said. "Those are organizational decisions: coaching staff, personnel department."

Alignment and empowerment.

With Schoen and Daboll running the show, it's now the Giants' way.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NY Giants: Inside 'The Team' created by Joe Schoen, Brian Daboll