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EAST RUTHERFORD – There’s no question Daniel Jones’ $23 million injury guarantee would play a part in his exit as the starting quarterback of the New York Giants.
The reality: the decision to bench Jones on Monday morning was about the football as much as it was about the feared financial penalty for next season.
As Pro Football Hall of Fame executive and former Giants general manager George Young once famously said, “When they say it’s not about the money, it’s always about the money.”
So yes, insisting the Giants turning the starting job over to Tommy DeVito has nothing to do with money – sending Jones to the bottom of the depth chart and bypassing backup Drew Lock in the process – is disingenuous.
There are always financial implications that factor into that consideration, but on-field performance became impossible to ignore for Joe Schoen, Brian Daboll and Giants ownership.
The Giants have spent Daboll’s entire tenure trying to put Jones in a position to succeed based on hope — their hope of what he could be if they built the offensive line, gave him weapons, kept playmakers healthy and called the right plays at the right time. At 2-8, what became painfully obvious: their hopeless devotion to him had to end.
How did the Giants get here?
Jones posted career highs in passing yards (3,205), completion percentage (67.2%) and passer rating (92.5) while rushing for 708 yards during the 2022 season, Daboll’s first. He was outstanding in the playoff victory in Minnesota against the 13-win Vikings, and even though the Giants were crushed the following week in Philadelphia, the arrow certainly appeared to be pointing up.
In hindsight, the Giants bought somewhat into fool’s gold across the board, as Schoen admitted last week when asked by NorthJersey.com in his bye week news conference.
“I’ve thought a lot about that and there’s probably truth to that,” Schoen said. “You come off a winning season, some of the issues were maybe masked or you’re blinded a little bit by it because of the success. Then once we extended Daniel, you try to accelerate it because the way that contract was structured. You got to make mistakes, too. I wish I came into this job and I didn’t make any mistakes.”
Under that contract, essentially a two-year deal worth $82 million guaranteed with an out prior to next season, Jones is scheduled to make $30.5 million in 2025: $30 million base salary and a $500,000 workout bonus.
Since Jones signed that deal, the Giants have only won three of the 16 games he has started. He missed three games with a neck injury last year – after missing the final six games of the 2021 season with another neck injury – and then tore his ACL upon returning
The Giants will gain $19.395 million of 2025 salary cap space by releasing a healthy Jones prior to March 16 without using a post-June 1 designation. There would be $22 million in dead money, a cap charge for a player no longer on the roster from guaranteed money already paid out.
Making the decision
Here’s how things played out last week regarding the QB decision, from an understanding of the situation based on conversations those with knowledge shared with NorthJersey.com:
The Giants were on the practice field last Tuesday for individual drills and developmental periods. As Schoen suggested in his bye week presser, there were no team periods. So no depth chart related drills. Any player who played in Sunday’s loss in Germany did not do much in practice, which is understandable.
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Then players left for the bye week and the QBs were not told anything about what the plan would be until they returned. The coaches met for most of the bye week for self-evaluation, looking ahead to Week 12 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the rest of the season.
When the players returned Monday, Daboll informed the quarterbacks and then the team of the QB decision.
The Giants coaches watched a bunch of plays from this season and saw far more plays that Jones missed or ones on which he made a mistake, and decided that – if they just had a different quarterback who could make those plays – they’d be a more productive offense.
And they have a better idea of what DeVito can do in this offense – more than Lock right now – so DeVito will get the chance to finish out the season. The Giants aren’t bypassing a chance to start Lock because of incentives in his contract, a $5 million deal Schoen and Daboll gave him in March.
If they worried about perception, and if Schoen and Daboll weren’t still in lock step, Lock would likely be getting the first chance. This brings unwanted criticism: why would the Giants give Lock that money if they did not want to play him?
Let’s be real here: the circumstances in March were different than the circumstances are now, and if Schoen could have foretold how the season would go, then they likely would have just had DeVito ready to go in Week 12.
To suggest Schoen is a fool because he signed Lock to be a veteran backup when, in March, at the time, they didn’t know when Jones would be cleared from the ACL injury, that’s revisionist history.
When Lock got that deal in March – and that wasn’t viewed as an overpay, given the market for a veteran backup – Jones was months away from getting cleared.
Eight months later, the Giants are 2-8. Circumstances have changed dramatically. The other part of this: the suggestion that the Giants are not playing Lock because of playing time and performance bonuses in his contract.
Here’s the deal: critics want us to believe the Giants are not playing Lock because they are worried he’d hit incentives of – checks notes – 15 touchdown passes in 7 games and 2,000 yards passing over that span.
Could we please be realistic here? If the Giants feared Lock would hit any of these statistical incentives, he would’ve been starting MUCH earlier for them than Week 12. He might have started Week 2 if they thought he could hit those.
This is not why DeVito is starting now.
The $5 million for Lock is already sunk cost, an insurance policy you never had to use.
There is a comfort level for Daboll with DeVito given his experience last season.
Will a segment of the fan base that will be in attendance Sunday and moving forward not boo DeVito as quickly as they would Jones and Lock? I believe that’s accurate.
But the popularity of the former Don Bosco quarterback and North Jersey cult hero isn’t going to save this season, and the suggestion that was an overriding factor for ownership is shortsighted.
DeVito sells out sub shops in North Jersey and younger fans love him. Fans of Italian heritage love DeVito. There’s no question about that, and his presence will be better received than Jones would have been, that’s for sure.
But just say there are 5,000 DeVito fans who come on Sunday instead of staying home – in a building that holds 70,000-plus – that’s not the reason this move at QB was made.
“We’re obviously not playing the way any of us want to play and that’s on all of us,” Daboll said. “But felt like this was a decision that we needed to make here and try to spark things, change things up. We went and did it with Tommy. Again, we spent a lot of time here over the last week of evaluating a lot of things and just felt like this was the best thing for us. We have a lot of football in front of us.”
And for the first time in six seasons, that future of the Giants at QB is someone other than Daniel Jones.
