NFL Draft is almost here and NY Giants GM Joe Schoen is still keeping everyone guessing

EAST RUTHERFORD - At this point, Giants general manager Joe Schoen might just purposely let the clock run out at No. 6 next Thursday night because no one sees it coming.

Trade up. Trade down. Stay put. Quarterback. Wide receiver. Pull off a surprise.

It's all on the table, and the ability to keep his options open has revealed itself as one of Schoen's greatest strengths this time of year. He's keeping people guessing, and sometimes that is very hard to do.

For years, the Giants were very easy to read in the NFL Draft. Secrets got out. Plans were wrecked because of that.

That's no longer the case with Schoen running the operation.

There is plenty of mystery surrounding the Giants, and most of that has to do with the quarterback position - will they or won't they take one: early, later or - gasp! - not at all? We just don't know for sure.

Schoen always says just enough to make you feel like he’s telling you everything. Then you go back and truly analyze what he told you and realize he told you absolutely nothing. That was again the case Thursday in his pre-draft news conference, another stage for someone who has mastered the art of draft deception to shine.

"There's a competitive advantage to that - to people not knowing what you're thinking or which way you're going to go," Schoen said. "You've got to have a lot of trust when you're there, when you do have conversations with people behind you looking to come up or whatever it may be. So you try your best to keep your cards close."

The Giants have done their homework on the quarterbacks. The deep dives on all the top prospects at the position have been completed.

Drake Maye, J.J. McCarthy, Jayden Daniels, Bo Nix and Spencer Rattler have all been through the Giants' facility on 30 visits. Schoen and coach Brian Daboll were at Daniels' Pro Day at LSU and the Washington Pro Day where they spent significant time with Michael Penix Jr., both during and on campus the following morning for the latter.

Were Schoen and Daboll there for Daniels and Penix or their top wide receivers, Malik Nabers and Rome Odunze, respectively? Probably both, but again, we don't know for sure.

Schoen himself professed last month at the NFL Annual Meeting in Orlando, Fla. that he hasn't told anyone his plans, so the idea that others outside the building knew was absurd.

I say this every year around this time, and these are the three rarest words spoken, heard and written regarding the NFL Draft: I. Don’t. Know. Schoen stepped in front of cameras and microphones Thursday and did his very best not to change that.

It's his job to enlighten in some respects, but also keep as many in the dark as possible.

Sure, this is lying season in the NFL, a sarcastic yet in some ways spot-on assessment of how misdirection is commonplace, smokescreens are rampant and those who really don't have a clue about the inner-workings of most teams' draft process pass off crumbs of third-hand information as if they were reporting gold.

Ah, good times.

And because of the Giants' failures over the past decade, we have been granted - unfortunately for them - the opportunity for more insight now than ever on how different regimes operate, what works, what doesn't work and the why behind that.

Former Giants GM Dave Gettleman keeps getting credit for drafting Dexter Lawrence in 2019. That's one of those situations where the process was a mess, yet the GM got lucky, which happens more than we'd like to admit.

Watch here: Our 'All In' Giants podcast show will be live from Big Blue's NFL Draft Party

After selecting Daniel Jones sixth overall that year, Gettleman tried trading up for Josh Allen, the linebacker from Montclair, with the Jaguars, his eventual team, holding the 7th pick. If the Giants were willing to do that, they should've pushed harder before the Jaguars were on the clock. It was way too late. Gettleman also tried to trade up for Michigan linebacker Devin Bush with No. 17 and the Steelers beat them to the punch, trading up to the 10th pick.

So, No. 17 was a bit of a panic, especially when newest Giants pass rusher Brian Burns went off the board to Carolina one pick earlier, and Gettleman went with Lawrence. He made the pick, he gets credit for it.

But give Lawrence, who has become one of the league's best defensive players, credit for buying into defensive line guru Andre Patterson's coaching and belief in what he could be, plus the current front office for giving him the green light to make the change up front from 3-technique to nose tackle.

The more I've seen covering the Giants, the more I believe a consistent and sound process yields more hits than misses. Gettleman's biggest issue was his process or lack thereof - it was chaos, at times short-sighted and a bit ego driven. For Jerry Reese, the plan post-Super Bowl XLVI became too stagnant, too stubborn. The Giants found Jason Pierre-Paul a certain way, fell in love with the height-weight-speed profile and let that steer the evaluation.

If Reese and Co. could find JPP, they'd find the next one - the JPP of tight ends, so to speak, as we all remember.

Time and again, that approach led to foundation-crumbling missteps.

The best compliment I can give Schoen through two drafts is that, from a process perspective, he's built a system with the Giants that puts the organization in position to make sound decisions in a quick and reasoned manner.

If the process is good, in theory, the results will follow. It's very challenging to succeed without both.

Will Schoen bring in a quarterback to compete with Daniel Jones, then ultimately replace him?

Will the Giants draft a No. 1 wide receiver for the first time since Odell Beckham Jr. a decade ago?

We're going to find out a week from now, and likely not before then, despite our best efforts.

To this point, that has been Joe Schoen's super power. Nobody really knows what he is going to do.

And for the Giants, the only thing that will matter is whether he gets it right.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NFL Draft 2024: Joe Schoen, NY Giants still keeping everyone guessing