The Giants’ disastrous Daniel Jones era is even more painful because of what could have been
Daniel Jones is the problem everyone but the New York Giants saw coming. Now in his sixth season, Jones is a bad quarterback masquerading as an elite one, purely by virtue of the desperate 4-year, $160M contract the Giants gave him in 2023. Now at 2-8, with fans watching this team get beaten by the Carolina Panthers and lapped in the NFC East by the rebuilding Commanders, there’s no doubt the Daniel Jones era is coming to an unceremonious end.
It’s almost assured the Giants will look for a new quarterback in the 2025 NFL Draft, especially if results hold and New York has the No. 2 overall pick. In our most-recent mock draft, JP Acosta has the Giants selecting Shadeur Sanders, the polarizing (albeit mega-talented) passer out of Colorado. That means we’re now in the post-mortem stage when it comes to Daniel Jones.
What exactly went wrong? Is there anything the Giants could have done differently to make Jones effective? Perhaps most sobering, what did this team miss out on by believing so much in Daniel Jones?
The origin of the Daniel Jones mess begins in 2018 with one of the biggest mistakes the Giants have made in decades. Following a nightmarish 3-13 season the team decided to part ways with long-time general manager Jerry Reese and replace him with … the exact same guy. The team hired Dave Gettleman, fresh off an up-and-down run with the Carolina Panthers, but the Giants’ big mistake was attributing the Panthers’ highs with Gettleman — when in reality he inherited Cam Newton, a solid roster, and a good head coach in Ron Rivera, meaning there was little he really needed to do in order to reform the team.
Gettleman had previously been with the Giants organization under Jerry Reese as director of pro personnel. His football sensibilities were cut from the same cloth, which made it so confusing that New York would hired him at a time of momentous change to turn things around. An old-school football guy, Gettleman abhorred analytics, didn’t have much faith in his scouting department, and instead decided to operate as a monolith — doing the bulk of player evaluation himself. In addition, he relied far too much on the relationships he’d built in football over three decades in the NFL, incorrectly using past examples and predictors of future success.
That’s where Daniel Jones enters the picture.
In the 2019 NFL Draft there wasn’t a great QB2 after Kyler Murray. The widely-held belief was that if you needed a franchise QB but didn’t have the No. 1 pick you’d need to wait until 2020 when Joe Burrow, Tua Tagovailoa, Justin Herbert, Jalen Hurts, and Jordan Love would flood the first round with talent. Never one for conventional logic, Gettleman decided to pick Daniel Jones with the No. 5 overall pick.
The key problem with the Jones pick is that it was entirely predicated on pedigree, not success. The Giants were coming off 15 years of Eli Manning and there was shared DNA here: David Cutcliffe. Coach of Ole Miss during Eli’s tenure, Cutcliffe was now at Duke and served as head coach to Daniel Jones. Every single metric indicated that Jones was not Eli Manning. The majority of Jones’ success came off RPO plays, he didn’t have the pocket presence of Manning, and his numbers at Duke really weren’t that great for a mid-tier program facing a largely mediocre schedule.
Despite all these issues Gettleman believed in Cutcliffe’s method to the point he took Jones, when purely based on talent he was seen as being a QB3 or QB4 by some analysts, and a second round pick at best by others.
Initially it looked like the Giants were the geniuses in the room. In his rookie season Jones threw for over 3,000 yards in 12 starts. It appeared as if the Giants had found their heir apparent, and they were going to manage to pull off their poor man’s version of the Colts transition, where the team moved on from Peyton Manning to Andrew Luck.
Then something happened, or more aptly, nothing happened. Jones showed no signs of improvement. In his defense the Giants’ offensive line was a mess and their receiving corps became garbage post-Odell Beckham Jr, but nonetheless Jones did nothing to mitigate these factors or prove that he could build on his skillset. Offensively the Giants moved from a West Coast offense under Mike Shula to an Air Coryell with Jason Garrett, and Jones was still mediocre.
Signs of life finally happened in 2022 when Gettleman was fired, Joe Schoen was hired as new GM, and Brian Daboll became the team’s new coach. Now with an Erhardt-Perkins system, Jones showed signs of life with a 3,200 yard passing season — but this should have been seen as too little, too late. Instead the team felt backed into a corner with Jones, needing to make a decision on his future with his rookie deal expiring, while also not being in the position for a succession plan. The team elected to believe that Jones was the answer with Daboll, leading to the massive new contract.
Fast forward to today and the common thread with the Giants was that this team has had so many problems on offense over the years that Jones’ mediocrity allowed him to skate by. There was always a plausible reason why he wasn’t successful from the OL to the WRs, with Jones always being just good enough that nobody considered him to be a problem.
The key mistake when it comes to Daniel Jones was drafting him at all. Giants fans, you might want to go ahead and read something else — because we’re about to get to an absolute horror story of what could have been.
2019 Draft
The Giants decide not to rush the process when it comes to QB and instead looks at this defense-heavy draft as a chance to reform their pass rush. The team selects either Josh Hines-Allen or Brian Burns with the No. 6 pick (where both were projected), and sticks with Dexter Lawrence at DT with the No. 17 pick.
2020 Draft
Now it’s time for the Giants to get their quarterback. With the No. 4 pick the team selects a prototypical pocket passer they can build around in Justin Herbert.
2021 Draft
With two brilliant pass rushers taken in 2019, and now a franchise QB in 2020 the team knows it needs to fix its offensive line. Instead of trading out of the pick to allow the Bears to take Justin Fields, the Giants stay at No. 11 and take offensive tackle Rashawn Slater to be the guy to cover Justin Herbert.
2022 Draft
Now they’re building from the inside out. There’s a major need at WR still looming, but right now you have Saquon Barkley, a solid QB, good pass rush, and a budding offensive line. Again with the No. 5 pick the Giants take OT Ikem Ekwonu to be their right tackle, giving the team one of the best tackle tandems in the entire NFL.
2023 Draft
An in-line tight end is in order after some success, and Sam LaPorta is on the board. LaPorta’s blocking, paired with the offensive tackles makes Saquon Barkley a must-keep part of the offense while the team still finds receivers later in the draft and via free agency.
2024
They still take Malik Nabers there, no gripes there.
End result
The Giants are one of the best teams in the NFC. Defensively they have a strong pass rush, and on offense you’re looking at a 2024 unit of Justin Herbert/Saquon Barkley/Malik Nabers/ Sam LaPorta, with two incredible offensive tackles.
Instead this team went a different route. Daniel Jones is bad, Saquon is thriving on the Eagles, and they’re going to be looking for a new QB in the NFL Draft. Football can be funny like that.
