Had been hoping to pass on any more Daniel Jones commentary until the end of the year and just watch the season play out. However, with the Giants at 6-1, it appears that the ground has already shifted. Indeed, as recently as just a month ago, the consensus around the Giants was that there was no way jose that they would ever resign Jones. Yet here we are, still in October, and the ongoing debate now isn’t even so much as whether the Giants will try and extend Jones, but how much will they be willing to pay him, with the ‘new’ general consensus in the peanut gallery – or at least that part that sends me emails – being that G.M. Joe Schoen ‘has a number in mind’ that he won’t go beyond.
Which sounds very business-like. However, it’s just not the way the NFL works. Of course, every team wants an elite franchise QB like Brady or Rodgers or more recently Mahomes or Josh Allen. But there just aren’t very many guys like that. Plus, even having an elite QB is no guarantee of Super Bowl success. For all his MVPs and 12-13 win seasons, Rodgers, for example, has won just one Super Bowl with the Packers. And if my math is correct, that’s roughly half the number the Giants won in the same period with Eli Manning!
In fact, the real goal for the vast majority of teams, even those with elite QBs, is to get to the playoffs. Because you can’t win the Super Bowl if you’re not in the playoffs and once you do get into the playoffs history has shown that just about anything can happen. And if you have a QB good enough to get you to the playoffs, you stick with that guy, pretty much whatever it costs, until you get something better.
(And yes I expect at this time that people will be chiming in with the old ‘yes, but what about the Chiefs and Alex Smith?’ whom they reportedly dumped in favor of Mahomes because ‘he couldn’t win the big one!’ Fact is the Chiefs didn’t move on from Smith, who had a 50-26 record as the starter at KC, because they didn’t think he could win a championship; they moved on because at the time he was a 34-year-old 14-year vet who was coming up on free agency who if they resigned would be almost 40 when his contract expired. Plus, they didn’t trade Smith away until a year after they had drafted Mahomes and were pretty comfortable that the latter was indeed the goods.)
All that said, I have always felt the most likely outcome here was going to be that the Giants would ultimately resign Jones. And it wasn’t so much based on what Jones brings to the table – although I have argued over the past several seasons that he was nowhere near as bad as a lot of folks were making him out to be – but that there really just weren’t any other good options out there.
Right from the start this year, the Giants looked like they were most likely – at best – to be picking in the bottom half of the first-round in 2023. And while one can rather blithely point to someone like the Ravens’ Lamar Jackson and say ‘see, you can find a QB later in the opening round’ the truth is that a player like Jackson is very much the exception. In fact, he’s the only QB taken in the second half of the opening round in the last decade who would even remotely represent an upgrade over Jones.
The fact is, that if the Giants were actually thinking of taking a QB this year to replace Jones this year, they would almost assuredly have to move up into the top 5-10 area – likely at the cost of several first round picks – even if they could find someone willing to deal (and that’s even less likely now that they are likely to be picking in the 20s this coming April.) And even if the Giants were able to move up into the top 10 range, the odds are still only about 1 in 4 that they’d actually get a true franchise QB.
At the same time, though, what I believe people are missing is the notion that what we have been seeing over the past few weeks is the emergence of a player with star potential in his own right in Daniel Jones. Of course, Jones isn’t putting up huge passing numbers, but what I think I am seeing is a guy who is going to be very difficult to defend going forward with a very unique combination of arm talent and big-play athleticism. Indeed, he’s probably the only QB in the league right now who looks like he has the potential to take it to the house every time he takes off on a designed run. And you can see it literally every time he turns the corner there’s that quick peak down the field to see if there is in fact a seam there.
At the same time, we’re also seeing a much more comfortable Jones in the pocket this year. He still hasn’t been asked to throw more than he really has to, but he’s been very accurate when he has had to throw. And arguably the biggest improvement in his overall game has been his ability to sense pressure, slide to a cleaner space and reset in the pocket when pressured.
The bottom line is that the Giants are something like 9-3 in Jones’ last dozen or so starts, and with not much more than a flyer on a late-first round project at QB, the most important position on the field – by oodles – as a backup plan, it’s just hard to see Schoen and Daboll allowing him to just walk away. My initial thought was that they’d likely extend him for something in the $22-25M range for three years, but I really think that train may have left the station a few weeks back.
And you have to understand how free agency works in the NFL. Every player has a certain market value, but what it is actually going to cost you to keep that player is what’s enough to keep him from leaving your building and going out and testing the market. The way free agency actually works is that if you have a guy in your house and you want him to stay you throw a boatload of money at him and say the offer is only good until the player leaves the building. And the Giants will have Jones in their building until March 13th next year. My guess, based on what NFL teams in similar circumstances, is the Giants offer him something in the $30-35M range; in fact, it certainly wouldn’t be a shock if Jones is ultimately extended for somewhere upwards of $40M over 5 years.
No argument here that that sounds like a lot. Because it is, although one has to remember that by the time you get to years 4-5 that with salary inflation $40M per could actually be near the bottom end for QBs. No question, it will also limit what the Giants will be able to do in free agency, but there likely isn’t a team in the league that would even consider for a moment not signing their prospective starting QB so that they would be able sign one or more free agents at other positions, especially if all they currently have to replace said starter are not much more than hopes, prayers and the odd maybe.
Of course, the Giants could also franchise Jones, although as a general rule teams don’t like to slap a tag on their QB other than as a last resort. And the fact that it is available to the team likely should restrain Jones and his team from asking ‘too’ much when the negotiations begin. Ultimately, the team’s goal here is not to try and stiff their QB, the guy they want to be their team leader, out of a few bucks so they can sign a back-up interior offensive lineman or two. And yes, in the bizzaro world of NFL finances even $5M is pretty much a ‘few bucks!’
And given the current trajectory I believe the case can be made that the Giants are actually just starting to scratch the surface. They have their two young OTs; they have their two young edge rushers; they have two young DTs; and they have a bunch of good young players in the secondary. The one thing they don’t really have is a couple or three solid receivers. However, put a couple of guys like that in this offense combined with the run ability of Barkley and Jones and this could be a very difficult group to defend. Indeed, allowing your QB to walk away at this time, without anything resembling a viable alternative in place, would be almost football malpractice.
