Giants' time is now, to make quarterback draft decision that will impact franchise for years 

Considering the weighty mess the Giants’ quarterback position was toward the end of last season, Joe Schoen has done a fairly decent job of stabilizing the room. He’s added two veterans, both of whom have vast (if not always stellar) experience as starters, at the top of the depth chart.

But that’s all Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston are, really, is triage. Wilson is 36, will be 37 during the upcoming season, and joins his fourth team in five seasons. He’s a former Super Bowl champ but hasn’t won a playoff game since the 2019 season. And Winston? He’s 31, has nearly as many stamps on his football passport, and has just two seasons with a winning record as a starter in his career, none since 2021. They’ll give the Giants more W’s on their roster, but not necessarily on their record.

They are, in the vernacular of the sport these days, prototypical “bridge” quarterbacks. They are placeholders who span the choppy straights between the comfortable terra firma of actual long-term solutions.

Right now they are bridges to nowhere.

That’s because the Giants don’t yet have anyone on the other side of them, someone they can point to with optimism and say that the future is going to be better than the past and present. Schoen, who has yet to hand in a ticket to select a quarterback during his first three years as general manager of the Giants, needs to solve that matter in this upcoming draft.

He doesn’t necessarily see it that way.

“With the signing of those two players (Wilson and Winston) I think we’ve put ourselves in a position where I don’t think it’s mandatory or something where our feet are in the fire and it’s something we have to do,” Schoen said on Wednesday in regard to drafting a quarterback.

Still, on the topic of having a young franchise quarterback, Schoen said: “Everybody wants one of those.”

Including his boss.

“That's obviously the number one issue for us going into this offseason, is to find our quarterback of the future,” team president and CEO John Mara said back in January when he announced he would be sticking with the current regime. He left it up to Schoen and his crew to figure out how to get that done.

Thus far, they have not.

So over the next few days, a-hunting Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll will go.

The Giants are scheduled to hold private workouts with Shedeur Sanders in Colorado on Thursday, with Jalen Milroe in Alabama on Friday, and with Tyler Shough in Louisville on Saturday. They’ve already had such a conference with Jaxson Dart of Mississippi.

After months of in-person attendance at games and practices, meetings at all-star games and bowl games, scrutiny at pro days and the Combine, this will be one last chance for Schoen to peruse the merchandise before making a possible purchase.

It seems unlikely Schoen will use the third overall pick he currently holds to select a quarterback. He appeared to be genuinely jazzed by the idea of either Abdul Carter or Travis Hunter being available in that spot, the likeliest scenario assuming the Titans fulfill predictions and take quarterback Cam Ward first overall.

But there are 27 other first-round picks after the Giants. And six rounds over two days after that. Somewhere in there — preferably early on — Schoen needs to land his and the team’s future. That could mean trading up into the first round for a second selection (a maneuver which gets our vote, especially for jumping ahead of other quarterback-needy teams like the Saints at 9 or Steelers at 21) or waiting patiently for the top of the second (the Giants have the 34th overall pick).

“If we don’t perceive there to be one or they’re not available when you pick, that’s out of your control,” Schoen said. “But we’d love to have one. If there is one available, we’ll take him.”

It’s true this isn’t an ideal draft to need a quarterback. Several will go in the first round based solely on demand but perhaps just one or two would have cracked the top six of last year’s crop. Drafting out of desperation is never a smart plan and teams need to trust their evaluation process, their eyes, and their guts.

The only thing worse than taking wild stabs at quarterbacks, though, may be waiting for the perfect one to come along. Newsflash: Those don’t exist. So you do the best you can when you can. For the Giants, that when is now.

If the Giants come out of next week’s festivities with the same three quarterbacks currently on their roster — Wilson, Winston and Tommy DeVito — the 2025 draft is bound to be remembered around here as a missed opportunity no matter what other potentially great position players they wind up with.

Schoen is the general manager who in February said he wanted to “keep swinging at the (quarterback) position until you find one.”

He’s taken a few hacks since. But this isn’t the time to start letting pitches sail by.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.