Giants look to ‘close that gap’ with competition

In a joint news conference to wrap up their first Giants seasons, Schoen and Daboll discussed a variety of topics. A sampling…

*Did the Giants overachieve, and if so, could they regress in 2023?

“I wouldn’t say we overachieved,” Schoen said. “I think Dabs did a good job, along with his staff, of ‘focus on the process and not necessarily the results.’ They came in on a weekly basis and focused on the process. They saw the dividends came on Sunday. I think there was a lot of good football players on our team. I think there were a lot of good teammates. Maybe we weren’t the most talented, but we did have a good team. Guys cared about each other. The culture was good and the process we had in place – again, I think the dividends showed on Sundays.”

*On whether it’s a priority to bring in a star wide receiver, as Buffalo did with Stefon Diggs when Schoen and Daboll were with the Bills, or the Eagles did last year with A.J. Brown.

“I think we want to continue to build the entire team,” Schoen said. “I know a number one wide receiver can be important but there’s some number one wide receivers that are home right now. I can go through this past weekend; you can go through a couple of weekends ago in the playoffs. A number one receiver doesn’t guarantee you anything. I think it’s important that we continue to build the team and there’s multiple positions where we want to upgrade throughout the offseason. So, yeah, I’d love to have a number one wide receiver, but we’ve got to place value on everything we do and if it makes sense, that’s something we’ll look to do.”

*On whether Lawrence, who led the team with 7.5 sacks, has earned another contract.

“I would say Dexter’s done enough,” Schoen said. “We want all of our guys back, we want them to be here for a long time. Dexter played well and we’ve got him under the fifth-year option and that’ll be part of our end-of-season review in terms of how we want to approach that. But yeah, Dexter played really well, great person, great teammate, happy he’s here. … We’re going to talk about it here in the future and then again, it goes back to we have certain cap space, and we have certain tools at our disposal. We’ll figure out how we want to utilize him.”

*With offensive coordinator Mike Kafka and defensive coordinator Wink Martindale interviewing for head coaching jobs, does Daboll anticipate changes to his staff?

“When you have these interviews that come up, and I’ve been part of them for the last three seasons, you always…