The course of Giants history may have changed Sunday amid a fake handoff to Matt Breida. Daniel Jones attempted to survey the Raiders’ defense and only caught a glimpse of Maxx Crosby screaming toward him like a hawk at a pet store. Jones tried and failed to evade him. Unfortunately for Jones, that maneuver led to the ominous buckle of his left knee that is painfully familiar to anyone who follows the NFL.
We don’t yet know the official extent of Jones’s injury (though multiple outlets reported Sunday night that the Giants “fear” Jones has torn his ACL, which, don’t we all wake up every morning “fearing” being hit by a bus or having a heart attack?), but it’s not hard to sense when an era has met its end. Jones may be the starting quarterback for the Giants in name at various points over the next few months and, maybe we will allow ourselves to believe there will be another summer of the five-year starter running the first-team offense at training camp to come. But it is almost impossible to imagine that Jones’s injury, just after he returned from a neck issue that had kept him out for several weeks, was not one of those cataclysmic moments that will inch the Giants closer to drafting his successor.
This is a horrible, untimely version of the truth. To be clear, we are not blaming Jones for being “injury prone.” We are not calling out some lack of toughness. Indeed, toughness, according to those who have evaluated Jones, has always been the quarterback’s most endearing trait, and will be the reason he has a long career in the NFL should he so choose. But Sunday illustrated the kind of Catch-22 the Giants have found themselves in, and the reason that signing Jones to a longer-term extension was always a complicated matter.
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In order to succeed with Jones in this current iteration of the roster, the Giants needed him to be mobile. Through the five full games Jones played this year, he was on pace to log the most rushing attempts (129) of his career. Already this season, he had a 10-attempt game against the Seahawks and a 13-attempt game against the Cowboys. Although these high-volume rushing games were almost exclusively due to a porous offensive line and an almost constant stream of free rushers (he was sacked 17 times between those two games) it doesn’t take away from the fact that situational mobility saved Jones’s career in the first place.
Brian Daboll was able to use Jones a bit like he once used Josh Allen in Buffalo or even a bit like his former coaching mate, Ken Dorsey, had learned to use Cam Newton in Carolina.
But we now know that this threat has its limitations. Jones has played one full season since being drafted in 2019. He has been on the injury report with a concussion, twice with neck issues, and with a smattering of ankle sprains and hamstring issues. Due to an almost comical series of injuries to his offensive line and a hard reset to the team’s core of playmakers, Jones has almost constantly had to run away from pressure. Jones was the fifth-most sacked quarterback in ’22 and the fourth-most sacked quarterback in ’20. Sunday’s injury was not the result of a designed run, but it felt like the culmination of a player having to constantly evade and endure, ad nauseam.
There is no doubt that time has weathered him faster than most. And it is hard to imagine the Giants’ being able to build a version of an offense around Jones in the near future that doesn’t put him consistently in harm’s way or ask him to be the kind of player who necessitates additional hours in the cold tub.
Sunday was as good a time as any to take the breadth of it in. The Giants need help on their roster in almost every way. These deficiencies could be covered up temporarily, like they were in 2022, but were always going to reveal themselves. Most of those deficiencies are like a sieve that pour into the inevitable conclusion: Jones running for his life, trying to stay off the turf. Without Jones, for one week or for six months, the Giants will come ever closer to one of the top two picks in the 2024 draft, atop which there could be a pair of quarterbacks believed to be generational talents (for what that is worth in early November).
However, this is not a preview of some animus-fueled breakup. Those who want to get rid of Jones without acknowledging all he had done to keep himself there, without acknowledging the toll his body took, are callous and unfeeling. Any kind of breakup would involve cooperation and understanding anyway. Jones’s contract is far easier to get out of following the 2024 season, when the dead-cap number reduces from more than $69 million to a manageable $22 million. Perhaps he can come back next year in a support role, which would allow him to get healthy without the pressure of taking significant snaps (à la Kyler Murray this season). Maybe he’ll take an extended rehabilitation period if, indeed, an MRI confirms the feared diagnosis of a torn ACL. Jones is just 26. Look at Joshua Dobbs. Baker Mayfield. Geno Smith. If he gave himself some time to heal, the next chapter can look so much better than this.
The real story is a need for mutual separation. Jones can thrive with a stable offensive line and some playmakers. Plug him onto the Buccaneers’ roster right now and I could see a team contending for a division title. Hell, send him to the Raiders at the beginning of this season and maybe Josh McDaniels would still be the coach. Even though the Giants’ scheme helped extend Jones’s career as a starter a year ago, it can no longer keep him that way as the remains of the Dave Gettleman–era roster continues to wither away.
Likewise, the Giants need time. The team needs to start over. The team needs the tools to build a system of longevity, and to break out of a survival mode in which there seem to be few survivors. Jones isn’t done, but he may very well be done in New York. That is going to end up for the best.
