Why the Giants-Daniel Jones Pairing Fell Apart Under the Current Regime

Where has it all gone wrong under the Giants' current regime that was supposed to help Daniel Jones turn the corner?

Nov 10, 2024; Munich, Germany; New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones (8) throws the ball against the Carolina Panthers in the second half during the 2024 NFL Munich Game at Allianz Arena. / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

Watching and listening to New York Giants general manager Joe Schoen deliver his annual bye-week press conference, there were times when the 45-year-old general manager looked like he was biting his tongue so hard that it might have fallen out of his mouth.

One such example came when he was asked about the team’s quarterback situation. Schoen was asked if he wished he had done anything differently at that position. 

Joe Schoen is asked if he wishes the Giants handled their QB situation differently in the offseason: "No" pic.twitter.com/zMWGurTAts

— Giants Videos (@SNYGiants) November 12, 2024

He hesitated, looking off into space as though he was ready to blurt out that he had.

“You're talking specifically on the quarterback position?” he finally asked. 

The reporter repeated that the question was about the quarterback situation.  

Schoen then took almost four seconds to respond.

“I mean, no.”

Schoen, who during his conference admitted to having made mistakes along the way, especially when he first took the job, wasn’t going to throw Daniel Jones under the bus as one of those mistakes. That’s not his style; he knows that doing so wouldn’t be viewed favorably by anyone inside the organization.

But the fact is that Shoen’s handling of Daniel Jones from Day 1, despite his intentions of wanting it to work and doing what he and head coach Brian Daboll could do to make it work, has turned out to be a disaster for the Giants who now face an uncertain future at the most important position on the team.

The pending divorce between Jones and the Giants isn’t all on the player. Team co-owner John Mara has, in the past, acknowledged that the organization didn’t give Jones the support he should have had.

Yet there was still hope that things would work out and that both sides would find a happily ever after leading toward more success than the 3-13 record the Giants have with Jones at the helm over the last two years.

Let’s rewind the clock to see where things really started to go wrong for the Giants and Jones under the Schoen-Daboll era that was supposed to be the jolt needed to get things back on track.  

2022 

Schoen inherited Jones from the previous regime, and one of his first decisions was to decline the option year on Jones’s rookie contract.

The reasoning behind the decision was two-fold. First, Jones was coming off a season-ending neck injury. They also had a new head coach, Brian Daboll, and there were questions about whether Jones’s skill set would fit what Daboll wanted from his quarterback.

So what happened? Jones, as was anticipated, made a full recovery. In his first season playing under Daboll, he had his best campaign since his 2019 rookie campaign, leading the team to a 9-7-1 record that pushed them down the 2023 draft order and out of contention for C.J. Stroud, Anthony Richardson, or Bryce Young. The Giants traded up one spot for cornerback Deonte Banks.

In the meantime, the Giants, who had tried to sign running back Saquon Barkley to a long-term deal dating back to the 2022 bye week, couldn’t make it happen thanks to Barkley’s team wanting more than what the Giants were offering. 

Jones’s team, meanwhile, came ready to play ball and closed a deal before the franchise tag window ended. This resulted in the four-year, $160 million albatross currently on the team’s books and Barkley's franchising (and subsequent rocky negotiations).

Why not let Jones test the market? Schoen never said it, but the likely reason was that the quarterback came off such a promising season. 

There was also likely no desire to risk another team coming in and paying Jones more than what the Giants were potentially looking to pay, as to lose him would have left them with fewer options, given how far down the draft order they were.  

Schoen, for what it’s worth, would later reflect on that decision not to exercise the option year and express regret. 

“If I thought I was going to be here a year ago,” he told reporters then, “I would have done that fifth-year option." 

But to his credit, Schoen, unwilling to fully crack open the bank for a quarterback who had one solid season, protected the franchise by putting a two-year out in the contract just in case it was needed.

2023

Because of what Jones showed in 2022 and how the team finished that season, Schoen, in retrospect, misjudged the state of the roster.

“I’ve thought a lot about that, and there's probably truth to that,” he said Tuesday. “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 of the way that contract was structured. … There were some parts of the process when I evaluated it that maybe were overlooked or I could have done a better job in the evaluation process or player procurement process. That's part of growth. I did make some mistakes or some decisions I wish I could have back.”

Several mistakes were made, but the biggest one was Jones’s significant regression in the first year of his new contract. Yes, there were injuries on offense–left tackle Andrew Thomas missed weeks with a hamstring injury and Jones also didn’t have Barkley in the lineup for those games he was healthy enough to play.

And yes, the offensive line was terrible–per Pro Football Focus, Jones was under pressure on 45.5% of his dropbacks in 2023. 

All that aside, Jones regressed badly other than for one half of football, that coming in a Week 2 come-from-behind win against Arizona. He went from a decisive quarterback to someone who suddenly looked as though he didn’t know what to do in the offense.

The neck injury and the torn ACL raised additional concerns about whether Jones would ever be the quarterback he was in 2022 again. 

2024 

If there was ever a year in which the quarterback situation took so many crazy turns, this was it.

Things began with Schoen and Daboll declaring at the end of the 2023 season that Jones, once healthy, would be the team’s starter in 2024.

Yet, as we learned from Hard Knocks, the Giants had done extra research into the historically deep quarterback class in the 2024 draft behind closed doors. 

It also came out that they were impressed by North Carolina’s Drake Maye and LSU’s Jayden Daniels, and Schoen, on more than one occasion, sought to trade up for one of those prospects only to find the asking price either way too high or the teas in front of him (Washington and New England, both of whom also needed quarterbacks) unwilling to budge.

The plan, had the Giants been able to draft a rookie, is believed to have allowed Jones, once healthy, to serve as a placeholder while the coaches prepared the rookie. 

But when the team realized it wasn’t going to have a chance at a quarterback, it pivoted by taking receiver Malik Nabers, one of the top three receivers in the class, to add to a growing cache that included an improved and veteran offensive line–all of which was designed to help Jones get back to his 2022 form.

Meanwhile, Schoen, who often spoke about protecting the franchise just in case something didn’t work out at the quarterback spot, had a chance to visit with former Seahawks and Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson, who, thanks to the Broncos picking up the bulk of his 2024 salary, would sign with the Steelers on a one-year, $1.21 million deal.

At that point, the Giants presumably told Wilson the same thing Drew Lock claims he was told: that Jones would be the starter once he was healthy. 

Why not have a competition for the job? Was it because of guilt over how Jones got a raw deal? What is it because of the injury? Isn’t it fair to wonder how much having a legitimate competition might have helped to light a fire under Jones?  

Final Thoughts

The Giants can deny it all they want, but if Jones was truly their top choice moving forward as they wanted people to believe, they wouldn’t have put an eclipse clause two years into his four-year contract, and they sure as heck wouldn’t have explored trading up in the draft for a new quarterback.

Again, as we learned in Hard Knocks, Door No. 1 was to get the quarterback, and Door No. 2 was to pivot to receiver and hope things would pan out.

They haven’t, and now the Giants are not only faced with doing some soul-searching as to who truly gives them the best chance to win some of these remaining games, they also have to figure out what they’re going to do in the future as they look at a draft class that doesn’t have the depth at quarterback that last year’s class had.

Next. 11/12: Factors Giants Considering in QB Switch. Factors Giants Are Likely Considering in Potential Quarterback Switch. dark

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