The incontrovertible fact that hiring John Harbaugh as head coach meant the Giants could be required to alter their front office structure was no small story. The truth is, it was such a giant factor that it was a part of the rationale for a multi-day delay between when the team announced its intentions to rent Harbaugh and when the deal was finalized.
We’d only really gotten small tidbits about how different the structure could be, but Ian O’Connor of The Athletic dropped a couple of key details this evening that actually show significant potential change.
Before O’Connor’s report today, the tidbits that we’d gotten were minor. Harbaugh desired to have roster input. Harbaugh would report on to owner John Mara and never general manager Joe Schoen. It was an identical situation to what Harbaugh had grown accustomed to in Baltimore and didn’t appear to be shaking up the boat an excessive amount of. Schoen desired to ensure Harbaugh wouldn’t be importing front office staffers to slowly take control of a front office that had been Schoen’s domain.
That appears to still be mostly the case, but there was one hire of Harbaugh’s that appears to be mixing things up. Per O’Connor, Harbaugh was pivotal within the team’s efforts to rent Dawn Aponte away from the league office. Aponte’s position with Latest York has been designated as senior vice chairman of football operations and strategy. In response to Pat Leonard of NY Day by day News Sports, she can be responsible for “strategic planning for football operations, analytics, salary cap management, player contract negotiations, compliance, and dealing closely with the faculty and pro personnel departments.”
That’s not all Leonard says. If it looks as if several of those responsibilities would often reside with the final manager, it’s because they’d. Per Leonard, Schoen has essentially been “relegated to handling scouting” and the “remainder of the constructing reports to Dawn.” As well as, each O’Connor and Leonard report that Aponte will report back to Harbaugh, so it’s starting to look as if Harbaugh is encroaching quite a bit greater than initially understood on the duties of the final manager.
O’Connor’s report doesn’t pose the situation as nearly as much of a takeover as Leonard is painting it out to be, though. He includes quotes from Harbaugh on how impressed he’s been with Schoen and the way well they’re working together as they each work on constructing the team’s latest staff and future roster. But, if what Leonard claims is true, it’s hard to not consider that Schoen is getting quietly pushed right into a corner. The Giants paid a number of money and agreed to a number of concessions with a purpose to bring Harbaugh in to steer their team. Time will tell how each latest change will affect the team’s future success.