Bill Parcells doesn’t want to forecast anything.
After all, he still doesn’t know who the Giants’ new general manager, Joe Schoen, will hire as his first head coach. So there’s no telling whether the Giants will be any better in 2022.
But Parcells is sure of one thing, at least: He is a big fan of Schoen.
“I like Joe Schoen very much, having worked with him,” Parcells, 80, told NJ Advance Media on Friday, shortly after the Giants announced Schoen’s hiring. “He’s a serious personnel man and a very good evaluator. He’s serious about his job.”
Parcells hired Schoen with the Dolphins in 2008, after Schoen worked his way up in the Panthers’ scouting department under Brandon Beane from 2001-07. Parcells gave Schoen a bigger role in Miami — national scout — and Schoen progressed to assistant director of college scouting by 2013. Schoen was Miami’s director of player personnel from 2014-17.
At the time, in 2008, Parcells was running the Dolphins’ football operations — a role he would leave during the 2010 season. It was his last full-time NFL job, capping a Hall-of-Fame career highlighted by his two Super Bowl victories as Giants head coach.
So he didn’t work for Schoen for that long, but he remembers him fondly. Parcells didn’t know Schoen before hiring him, but it’s not like Parcells went into the interview blind.
“I had good information about him from a very close friend of mine,” Parcells said.
That would be Dan Henning, the Panthers’ offensive coordinator from 2002-06. He had worked on Parcells’ Jets staff in the late 1990s. And he would be the Dolphins’ offensive coordinator from 2008-10 — his final NFL job.
Henning liked what he saw from Schoen in Carolina, where Schoen began his career as a ticket office intern in 2000. And Parcells liked what he saw in that interview, as he gave Schoen a more prominent job with the Dolphins that would help spark his career’s growth.
In 2017, when Beane became Buffalo’s GM, Schoen left Miami. He reunited with his longtime friend and mentor — and became Beane’s right-hand man. Schoen was Beane’s assistant GM before the Giants hired him to replace Dave Gettleman.
Now, Parcells gets to sit back and watch Schoen — who is still just 42 years old — try to rebuild his former team.
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Darryl Slater may be reached at dslater@njadvancemedia.com.