Big Blue View
This has already been an eventful week
The New York Giants face the Carolina Panthers in Week 10 as they play out the string of yet another lost season. Here are some ‘things I think’ as we gear up for the game.
Daniel Jones is coming off his best game of the season. His best game, in fact, since 2022. Yet, the reality of where the Giants are in their season and where Jones is in his career, mean that Sunday in Munich, Germany could mark the final start of Jones’ career as Giants quarterback.
The Giants and Panthers have identical 2-7 records, yet the Giants are a significant favorite when it comes to the betting odds. This has always been a game the Giants were expected to win.
If they don’t, they will be 2-8 heading into their bye week. It will be difficult at that point for head coach Brian Daboll and GM Joe Schoen to justify starting Jones at MetLife Stadium Week 12 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The season will clearly be over in terms of competing for a playoff spot. It already is, of course, but even the Giants will have to admit that if they can’t beat the Panthers. It is clear that the Jones-Giants marriage has run its course and that the Giants need a new plan at quarterback.
It is a huge financial risk for the Giants to continue to play Jones when the outcome of the 2024 season, and when we know what has to happen when it’s done, are already all but certain.
Daboll has already, without hesitation, said Jones will start against Carolina. In my view, that is the right call. He is coming off an excellent performance. It would be a terrible message to the locker room for him to get benched after it — one that would make players question if if playing hard and playing well mattered.
Neither Drew Lock nor Tommy DeVito has taken first-team reps, and on a week where the team is traveling internationally asking one of them to step into the lineup is not a good circumstance. Following a bye week is a different matter.
Regardless of when it comes, it seems like we are now on a week-to-week death watch for Jones’ time as the Giants franchise quarterback.
I understood GM Joe Schoen’s desire to get more than sixth- or seventh-round picks in return for Azeez Ojulari and Darius Slayton, particularly the 24-year-old Ojulari. The big questions remains — now that the Giants kept both players for the remainder of the season, can they keep them beyond that?
Both can be free agents. Both should have markets, particularly Ojulari. Does Slayton, who seems to feel perennially undervalued by the current regime, even want to come back? Kayvon Thibodeaux and Brian Burns account for more than $38 million on the 2025 cap, more than 14% of a projected $272.5 million cap, have the ability...
