By Eddie Young
Sports Editor
In the second quarter of the Giants’ Nov. 5 game against the Las Vegas Raiders, quarterback Daniel Jones tore his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), which will keep him sidelined for the rest of this season and potentially for the beginning of next season. This occurred during his return to the field after being out of the three previous games due to a neck injury.
After a 9-7-1 season last year, in which the Giants made the playoffs and won their wild card game, they are 2-7 and filled with disappointment. Sure, a lot of the blame for the record can be placed on the fact that Daniel Jones has missed time due to injuries, but even with Jones as the starter, the team has been 1-6. While the Giants have not put the best pieces around their quarterback to help him succeed, the time has come for them to move on from Jones and to draft a quarterback with their first round pick in the upcoming National Football League (NFL) Draft.
Daniel Jones has shown slight growth in each season as the quarterback of the Giants. His passing numbers have been similar during each year of his career, but his turnovers have decreased significantly year after year and his rushing numbers have gotten better, too. All of this growth accumulated into a big 2022 season for Jones, where he led the Giants to the playoffs, throwing for 3,205 yards and 15 touchdowns while also rushing for just over 700 yards and seven touchdowns. This good season convinced the Giants into giving him a four year, $160 million contract.
However, the Giants miscalculated the continued growth of Daniel Jones. After a pretty good rookie season, his passing stats have not seen a ton of growth. Even after his good 2022 season that earned him the big contract, he only had 200 more passing yards than he did in his rookie season and had 9 less passing touchdowns while having played three more games. The biggest factor in Jones’ leap he made from year three to year four was his new head coach, Brian Daboll.
Daboll has been known as a bit of a “quarterback whisperer” after he helped take Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen from a very raw prospect to a superstar when he was the offensive coordinator in Buffalo. In the first year Daboll got to work with Jones, the young quarterback put together his best season up to that point.
However, it seems as if Daboll has gotten all that he can out of Jones and he has hit his ceiling as a player. So far this season, teams seemed to have figured him out, as his turnover numbers are back up and his passing yards and touchdowns are way down.
Now, with Jones out for the season and the Giants already having a 2-7 record, it seems very likely that New York is going to end up with a top pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. This draft is going to be filled with great quarterback prospects, with around 10 different names having been mentioned as first round picks in different mock drafts up to this point in the season.
If the Giants are at the top of the draft, which seems inevitable, then it is going to be very hard for them to pass up on one of the many great quarterbacks that will be available to them. A chance like this may not arise again for the Giants in a long time. A healthy Jones is too good of a quarterback to keep them from having a high draft pick, a draft this rich with quarterbacks will not be seen for years to come. The Giants will have a very high pick, and Daboll will want a new quarterback of his choosing to work with and mold into the player he wants him to be.
One scary aspect of this move would be the massive contract that Daniel Jones just signed. He is currently in year one of the four year $160 million deal. However, only the first two years of this deal are guaranteed, so the Giants could easily get out of the contract after next season by cutting him or trading him. Even coming off of his recently torn ACL, Jones showed enough talent last season for a new team to consider trading for him and giving him a second chance in a new spot.
For the Giants, though, they will not have a good enough team to compete for the Super Bowl any time in the near future if Daniel Jones does not show any signs of further improvement after his injury and if they pay him $40 million per year. The situation is ripe for them to draft his replacement and move on from Jones at the quarterback position.
