The New York Giants appear locked in on Daniel Jones starting at quarterback in 2022, but they’ve publicly acknowledged a desire to beef up their reserves.
One potential option is Mitchell Trubisky, a 1b to Jones dating back to their days at North Carolina and Duke, respectively. However, Trubisky is gaining momentum as the new league year approaches and could be a hot commodity once free agency officially begins.
Given the Giants’ desperate need to trim salary cap space, it seems unlikely they’d engage in some sort of bidding war for a backup. Yet, that’s precisely what may happen.
ESPN’s Dan Graziano and Jeremy Fowler report that the Giants are among the teams who are believed to be “in the mix” to sign Trubisky, joining the Carolina Panthers, Washington Commanders and others.
Mitchell Trubisky: Teams are openly discussing whether Trubisky gets $10 million or more annually on a new deal. That his name is a hot one is not manufactured. It’s real. His career reset in Buffalo went very well, and teams that will look to draft a quarterback could sign Trubisky to start this year. A Trubisky pairing with a first-round quarterback such as Malik Willis wouldn’t shock a few teams. The Panthers, Steelers, Commanders, Giants and potential Broncos are believed to be in the mix here.
With a potential deal of $10 million annually, that would put the Giants in a position where they’re paying two quarterbacks starting money. That would be a steep price for Trubisky to sit on the bench. And if you believe he’d beat out Jones, that would leave nearly $8.4 million (cap hit) sitting on the bench.
That’s not a realistic scenario for general manager Joe Schoen and the Giants. They don’t have that sort of money to play with and investing it into two quarterbacks and not the offensive line would be unimaginably wasteful.
Ultimately, expect the Giants to poke around Trubisky a bit before the other teams become more serious. At that point, they’ll go off in search of Jones’ backup elsewhere.