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It’ll be Joe Schoen’s war room on Thursday night, his seat at the table of a flagging flagship franchise that turns its lonely eyes to him and begs him to begin steering the New York Football Giants out of the darkness to a place where the sun can shine again from Big Blue Heaven.

“I felt the obligation of representing Gotham,” former Giants GM Ernie Accorsi told The Post. “I knew it was, in my mind, the biggest job in the league. You just don’t want to let them down.”

Accorsi took the baton from Hall of Fame general manager George Young and didn’t want to let the owners down, didn’t want to let Giants fans down.

“I talked to Brian Cashman about that several times,” Accorsi said. “He says, ‘I feel the weight of the whole Yankee tradition and fandom on my shoulders all the time.’ The thing about those two franchises is that they had a history of success. It’s championships or nothing. You want to deliver for the fans because they’re such great fans.”

Accorsi sure delivered when he engineered the blockbuster 2004 draft-day trade for Eli Manning. Schoen follows Dave Gettleman, so the bar isn’t nearly as high for him as it was for Accorsi, but there is no excuse for him to fail to deliver with the fifth and seventh picks of this 2022 NFL Draft.

Best player available is almost always the best philosophy, and because the road to ruin leading to East Rutherford is littered with offensive line busts and flops, in the draft and in free agency, good luck finding a Giants fan who isn’t praying that the best player available is a tackle bookend for left tackle Andrew Thomas.


  Giants GM Joe Schoen at the NFL Scouting Combine Getty Images Giants GM Joe Schoen at the NFL Scouting Combine Getty Images

Schoen has holes to fill all over the roster — edge rusher, cornerback, safety, wide receiver, linebacker, tight end, to name a few — but it is the organization’s maddening failure to keep Eli Manning upright at the end of his career and Daniel Jones at the beginning of his that has sabotaged the offense and infuriated Giants fans.

It was Jerry Reese who made left tackle Ereck Flowers the ninth pick in 2015, but Schoen is the new GM in large part because John Mara finally flagged Gettleman for holding four years after his introductory press conference promise to fix the offensive line.

“We’re going to work our fannies off,” Gettleman said, “and we’re going to get it fixed.”

(Nate Solder turned out to be a $62 million Band-Aid, Flowers couldn’t transition to right tackle, Will Hernandez and Matt Peart didn’t pan out and Nick Gates and Shane Lemieux got hurt).

So FIX IT, JOE, AND FIX IT NOW!


  Daniel Jones gets sacked in a 2021 game against the Rams Getty Images Daniel Jones gets sacked in a 2021 game against the Rams Getty Images

For Jones’ sake, and for the sake of your handpicked franchise quarterback if you decide that he isn’t the long-term answer.

You can forgive Jones, who will be fighting for his Giants career, and Giants fans alike if they borrow a line from the movie “Draft Day,” when Kevin Costner, playing the part of Browns GM Sonny Weaver, wrote “Vontae Mack no matter what” before making the linebacker the shocking first pick of the NFL draft:

“Ickey Ekwonu no matter what.”

“Evan Neal no matter what.”

“Charles Cross no matter what.”


  NC State offensive tackle Ickey Ekwonu runs a drill at the NFL Scouting Combine Getty Images NC State offensive tackle Ickey Ekwonu runs a drill at the NFL Scouting Combine Getty Images

Mara’s confession that, “We’ve done everything possible to screw this kid up” and burning desire to validate Jones as Manning’s rightful successor led him to Brian Daboll, via Schoen, as the quarterback’s third head coach.

The free-agent signing last season of $72 million man Kenny Golladay and drafting of Kadarius Toney were designed with getting Jones over the hump, but neither caught a touchdown pass. With a revolving door on the offensive line and at offensive play-caller and offensive line coach and with a diminished Saquon Barkley, Jones had no running game to speak of — and no hope.

Only Schoen knows how his board is stacked and whether he can afford to wait to grab a tackle in the second round, with the 36th overall pick. But in his pre-draft press conference, he acknowledged how much of a difference an offensive line can make for a Jones and for a Barkley. He has upgraded the interior of the line, but the job isn’t finished by any means.

Accorsi will be remembered forever for delivering Manning, who delivered those two Super Bowl championships, but he also signed Rich Seubert and Shaun O’Hara and Kareem McKenzie and David Diehl, and was fortunate that Pat Flaherty was the offensive line coach.

“That position is like a fist,” Accorsi likes to say. “All the fingers have to work together. If you have one finger out, it’s not gonna work.”

Giants fans so desperately want to give Joe Schoen a hand by the end of the night.

“In my opinion, it’s the best job in the league,” Accorsi said. “I used to tell the young kids who might go on and aspire to be GMs, and it might be with different teams, I said, ‘I got a break you guys aren’t gonna have, because this is my last stop, and it doesn’t get any better than this. And you’re gonna find out there’s no place like this.’ ”

“Offensive tackle no matter what.”

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