Offense? Defense? NFL experience? Giants to cast a wide net in their coaching search

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — The groundwork to find the New York Giants' next coach began not long after Brian Daboll was fired in November.

Joe Schoen went to work doing research and coming up with a list of potential candidates.

Now that the NFL regular season is over, the search begins in earnest. Interim coach Mike Kafka will get a courtesy interview, though that's just the start of the “wide net” Schoen promised to cast after ownership confirmed he'd be back for a fifth year as general manager.

“There’s no directive that it has to be an offensive guy or a defensive guy or special teams or college or whatever it may be — having head coaching experience previously,” Schoen said Monday. “There’s several criteria that we’re going to look for, leadership being an important element in the head coaching world. Football acumen will be important. Player development is very important, having a plan for player development (along with) holding people accountable and communication.”

Helping franchise quarterback Jaxson Dart take his game to the next level after an impressive rookie season is perhaps the most important job for whoever takes over. Dart on locker-cleanout day said he trusts Schoen and the owners to make the right hire and believes he can work with any coach.

“I definitely feel like there’s a relationship standpoint from a quarterback-to-head coach thing that you want, and I think that will help you play better on the field,” said Dart, who threw for 15 touchdowns and ran for nine more in his first 12 starts in the league. “You definitely want somebody who can match my intensity and I can match theirs and have the same vision and outlook of how we want things to be done and to win at the highest level.”

An older teammate invoked the name of the most recent person to win at the highest level with the Giants when asked what qualities he'd like to see in the next coach.

“Somebody that’s Tom Coughlin-esque,” veteran receiver Darius Slayton said. “It’s no mistake why he won when he was here was his personality and the way he went about his business, and I think it takes a certain type of person to be a head coach in New York. It’s tough job. It obviously comes with a lot of scrutiny, but I think you need to have a certain disposition to get the job done effectively and I feel like he probably embodies a lot of qualities that we require now.”

New York has had seven coaches since Coughlin, a two-time Super Bowl champion, retired from coaching following the 2015 season. Counting two playoff games, they have gone 45-105-1: a winning percentage of .300.

“No matter who the coach is, the players got to step it up,” said running back Cam Skattebo, who had his rookie year cut short midway through by a broken right fibula and dislocated right ankle. “We have to lead (by) example for each other.”

While prior experience running an NFL team is not a prerequisite, it doesn't hurt the cases of Mike McCarthy, Vance Joseph or a couple of coaches who were freshly fired: John Harbaugh from Baltimore and Kevin Stefanski from Cleveland. Harbaugh figures to shoot to the top of the Giants' list after his abrupt dismissal by the Ravens on Tuesday.

Schoen did not know over the past eight weeks if Harbaugh, Stefanski, Atlanta's Raheem Morris or others would be available, so he spent time studying coordinators as part of a much longer process than he got after taking over as GM in January 2022, when he hired Daboll days later.

"Having this runway has really helped," Schoen said, “I feel really good about the information we’ve collected already. There’s some really good candidates on both sides of the ball, collegiately. We’re going to look everywhere.”

Offensive coordinators Klint Kubiak in Seattle and Kliff Kingsbury in Washington are among the options if the Giants look for someone known for working with QBs, such as Jacksonville found in Liam Coen for Trevor Lawrence and Chicago in Ben Johnson for Caleb Williams.

Intriguing defensive coordinators include Lou Anarumo in Indianapolis, Jeff Hafley in Green Bay and Chris Shula of the Los Angeles Rams.

Schoen cited Sean McDermott from his previous stop in Buffalo with Josh Allen and New England's Mike Vrabel with Drake Maye as defensive-minded coaches who have overseen quarterbacks becoming elite. But he has also said he wants the next coach to be able to lead the entire team, not just Dart, who might meet a candidate along the way but won't be asked for input on the hire.

Owners John Mara and Steve Tisch and their families will make the final call. Players offering their suggestions included edge rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux wanting “someone that pushes us” and tight end Theo Johnson a coach who can handle the pressure and get the most out of talent, while also relating to them as people.

“A leader: somebody that can lead men out to battle, somebody we want to go battle for and somebody that’s going to have your back when you’re out there on the field, somebody that’s going to uplift you when your down,” top receiver Malik Nabers said. “If we find someone that can do that, we’d be leaning to the right direction.”

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Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh, left, and Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, right, talk before an NFL football game Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026, in Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

FILE - New York Giants general manager Joe Schoen reacts during Back Together Weekend at the team's NFL football training camp, July 27, 2025, in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger, File)

Atlanta Falcons head coach Raheem Morris talks to reporters after an NFL football game against the New Orleans Saints, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Cleveland Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski walks on the sideline during the second half of an NFL football game against the Cincinnati Bengals, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The North Carolina Supreme Court on Thursday threw out longtime litigation over education funding in the state, a decision that's likely to keep intact the power to decide how much money to spend and where with the legislature, not judges.

The 4-3 ruling, led by Republican justices on the court, set aside a landmark ruling in 2022 when the court, then with a Democratic majority, ruled that a lower court judge had the authority to order that taxpayer money be directed to state agencies to address longstanding education inequities.

The following year, another trial judge calculated that the state owed $678 million to fulfill two years of an eight-year, multibillion-dollar comprehensive remedial plan in part to improve teacher recruitment and salaries, expand prekindergarten and help students with disabilities.

In Thursday's ruling, Chief Justice Paul Newby wrote that what started as a modest lawsuit over education spending in one county “became a full-scale, facial assault on the entire educational system enacted by the General Assembly.” Since then, Newby said, judicial actions had gone too far.

When the case expanded “the trial court’s authority to hear the case likewise ceased,” Newby wrote while ordering the school funding litigation be dismissed.

The decision came more than two years after the court heard oral arguments. Republicans who control the General Assembly won’t be obligated to comply with the remedial plan as it writes state budgets, including one for this year that’s now several months late.

Democratic Gov. Josh Stein will have to rely more on persuading lawmakers and using his veto stamp to spend more on his favored education programs and initiatives. Stein was North Carolina's attorney general when the 2022 ruling was handed down.

“The Supreme Court simply ignored its own established precedent, enabling the General Assembly to continue to deprive another generation of North Carolina students of the education promised by our constitution,” Stein said in a statement Thursday.

Two Democratic justices and one Republican dissented in Thursday's ruling.

Associate Justice Anita Earls, a Democrat, said the decision seemed more about dealing with how the 2022 decision was reached than what happens to students.

“Allowing the state to escape judicial scrutiny for constitutional rights violations through its behavior during litigation quickly turns constitutional rights into words on paper — morally compelling but functionally useless,” she wrote.

Attention will now turn toward crafting the next state education spending proposal. The General Assembly reconvenes this month. Close to 40% of the state’s more than $30 billion in annual spending to operate government goes to K-12 funding alone.

Republican Senate leader Phil Berger said in a news release that “liberal education special interests have improperly tried to hijack North Carolina’s constitutional funding process in order to impose their policy preferences via judicial fiat. Today’s decision confirms that the proper pathway for policymaking is the legislative process.”

Critics of GOP education spending have pointed in part to taxpayer-funded scholarships for K-12 students to attend private schools as evidence more could be done for public school children.

The litigation began in 1994, when several school districts in low-income areas and families of children sued and accused the state of violating North Carolina's constitution by not providing adequate education funding.

The case is often referred to as “Leandro” — for the last name of one of the students who sued.

Supreme Court decisions in the case from 1997 and 2004 found the state constitution directs all children must receive the “opportunity to receive a sound basic education,” and that the state remained poorly equipped to comply with that dictate. Many say it's a problem still unresolved.

“The people paying the price for our leaders’ failure are not abstractions. They are the generations of children in rural communities, past and present, who waited for 30 years for a promise never fulfilled,” Tamika Walker Kelly, president of the North Carolina Association of Educators, said in a news release.

The court’s Democratic majority in 2022 had determined that those Supreme Court decisions along with the constitution’s “right to the privilege of education” and years of inaction by elected officials created an “extraordinary” situation that gave the late Judge David Lee power to order funds be spent without a specific law enacted by the General Assembly.

FILE - North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby addresses the audience at the North Carolina Medal of Valor Ceremony at the Legislative Building, in Raleigh, N.C., July 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Makiya Seminera, File)