The New York Giants selected Duke quarterback Daniel Jones with the sixth overall pick in the 2019 NFL draft.
Five years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, they still don’t know if he’s their “guy.”
The Giants might outwardly state the oft-injured Jones, who has yet to post elite stats as a starter in this league, is their future at quarterback, but experts believe that the Giants should be moving on from Jones.
Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner, who now works as a studio analyst for the NFL Network, used the Giants’ situation with Jones as an example of how the Chicago Bears should approach their upcoming decision with quarterback Justin Fields.
“When you get to the point we are at in this league with quarterbacks — what you have to pay them and what that means for your organization — you better know that he’s the guy,” Warner told a select group of reporters at the Super Bowl, via the New York Post. “That, to me, is where teams get in trouble.
“The Giants go give $40 million [per year] to Daniel Jones. He hasn’t shown us he’s that guy. We’ve seen glimpses, maybe. The Giants are still behind the 8-ball because he’s still not that guy. Maybe he will be, but he’s not right now — and they paid him.”
The Giants have no choice but to roster Jones this season as they don’t have an ‘out’ clause in his deal until 2025. But paying and playing Jones in 2024 should not affect their future plans at quarterback if they are simply waiting for his clock to run out.
Ironically, the Giants own the sixth pick in this year’s draft and could very well use that to select Jones’ successor.
