Giants' chaotic draft-day maneuvering for Jaxson Dart trade included mystery team ‘backing out'
The Texans might not have been Joe Schoen's first choice in the Jaxson Dart trade.
Behind-the-scenes footage released by the Giants from draft night shows Schoen on the phone with an unnamed general manager during the first round asking, 'Are you still good to do this?'
It then cuts to Schoen telling the rest of the Giants brass that the mystery GM backed out on the deal.
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'All week he said he would do this deal and now he's backing out on us,' Schoen says.
Joe Schoen's wheeling and dealing at the 2025 NFL Draft included one mystery team backing out of a supposed trade.
Giants/X
The ensuing series of cuts leave it deliberately unclear whether what comes next is part of the same conversation, but it's clear Schoen was stressed about how the 2025 NFL Draft might fall from there.
'Does that tip the hand, New York's now trying to move up?' he says at one point.
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'Leading up to the draft, it feels like there were rumors out there that the Giants wanted to move back up into one and just all that was going on,' Schoen said in an interview for Giants Life, the team's all-access show that released the footage. 'So, I was getting calls from every GM from pick 18 all the way back just because everybody assumed that we wanted to move up.
'Then once we get to draft day and you get into the 20s, now all of a sudden there's players there that the general managers didn't think were going to be there. So if they go from, hey, we want to move back, there's not going to be anything there we like, nah, we're not going to take your deal because we're going to take our players.
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'It can definitely become stressful from that standpoint because you thought you'd be able to get up and now all of a sudden these teams are staying and they're not willing to move back. That's when it really gets stressful, like you thought you're going to have an opportunity to make a deal for a week or so because these teams are clamoring to get out of the first round and back into 34, and then now suddenly the phone's getting hung up, nobody's making a deal, and you're on to the next team.'
Finally, the footage shows Schoen taking a call from Texans GM Nick Caserio and completing the deal, in which the Giants received the 25th pick for the 34th and 99th picks along with their 2026 third-round pick.
Giants owner John Mara, New York Giants GM Joe Schoen, Jaxson Dart and New York Giants Head Coach Brian Daboll.
Robert Sabo for NY Post
They would take Dart, the Ole Miss QB, shortly thereafter.
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Interestingly, Schoen was already on the phone with another GM, the Rams' Les Snead, when Caserio called. Schoen put Snead on hold while agreeing to terms with Caserio, then informed him the Giants would move up with Houston.
Schoen then daps up coach Brian Daboll and gets a 'Good going' from co-owner Steve Tisch.
'When we got the 'yes' from Houston, we were all ecstatic,' Schoen said, per Giants.com. 'We were able to finally get our guy that we had identified late in [round] one that we'd be willing to trade up for.'
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