5 winners and 5 losers from the New York Giants’ benching of Daniel Jones

It’s finally happened. We now know that Daniel Jones will not be a New York Giant in the 2025 season. Of course, that won’t be official until they release him, but it’s a pretty safe assumption. In the aftermath, who are the winners and losers in the fallout from Monday’s announcement? It’s complicated – you can win by losing and lose by winning sometimes.

Winners

Giants fans (for now, anyway)

Fans have been clamoring for Jones to no longer be part of their lives since … since the moment that he was announced as the No. 6 pick in the 2019 NFL Draft instead of edge defender Josh Allen. Jones quickly changed some minds in his first NFL start with his dramatic come-from-behind victory in Tampa Bay. He had his moments after that – a 5 TD overtime win In Washington that forced the Giants to draft Andrew Thomas instead of Chase Young (thanks, Daniel); a 402-yard performance in the Superdome that led the Giants to an OT victory over the Saints; a stirring comeback to lead the Giants to victory over Aaron Rodgers and the Packers in London; the 301-yard, 2 TD Wild Card victory over Minnesota, the Giants only playoff win since the 2011 season Super Bowl; and even the unexpected 257-yard, 2 TD win in Seattle this season.

The good moments were just too few and far between, though. More often, Jones had trouble reading defenses, stared at his first read, waited to see his receiver open before throwing, and threw short of the sticks rather than taking shots downfield.

Tommy DeVito

Surprisingly, to some, DeVito was named Jones’ replacement for Sunday’s game against Tampa Bay rather than Drew Lock. For DeVito, this is a golden opportunity to show the Giants – and the league – that he can be a viable NFL backup quarterback. DeVito won three games as a starter last season, including a thrilling last-minute comeback drive against Green Bay on Monday Night Football. If he has learned more about playing the position in the NFL since then, he can show that to the Giants and the rest of the league and possibly guarantee himself a paycheck for years. Backup quarterback in the NFL isn’t bad work if you can get it. Just ask Jeff Hostetler and Nick Foles.

This comes with an asterisk. DeVito looked fine against Washington, New England, and Green Bay. When he went up against better defenses, though, he was completely confused by what New Orleans was doing and got coal in his stocking when he couldn’t move the ball in Philadelphia on Christmas Day. So this is as much an opportunity for DeVito to be exposed as it is for him to establish himself. Be careful what you wish for.

Daniel Jones

What? Hear me out. Jones is by all indications a nice guy who works hard, is respected by his teammates, and never points the finger at anyone else (other than when Marcus Johnson dropped a potential TD pass in Jacksonville in 2022). Has any professional football player been more maligned by fans and the press than Jones has during his tenure as a Giant?

The fact that he always seemed to play better on the road than at MetLife might be a statistical quirk, but it also may indicate that the booing affected his play. Going someplace else may be just what the doctor ordered. Look at Sam Darnold, also driven out of New York for his failures by a different fan base and now sitting pretty as starting QB (for one year, anyway) for a Minnesota team likely to be in the playoffs. It’s fair to say that Darnold has resuscitated his career, even if he never lives up to his No. 3 draft slot. Jones will now have a chance to do the same. A bonus – Jones, never comfortable at the podium, will not have to deal with the Giants’ beat reporters any more.

Other bad NFL teams

If you subscribe to the idea that Jones was the primary thing preventing the Giants from winning more games, then you probably also believe that now that he is benched, the Giants will win more games the rest of the season and drop in the draft order. That may be good news for QB-needy teams like Tennessee, Cleveland, and Las Vegas.

Rarely discussed now is something that was made a big deal out of when the season began, namely that the Giants’ schedule seemed to be front-loaded with tough opponents in the first half of the season. That has more or less happened, though not in the way most of us predicted. Minnesota, Washington, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh have turned out to be more formidable than anticipated, though Cleveland and Dallas have not. Certainly that contributed to the Giants’ awful record this year with Jones.

The remainder of the schedule is not so fearsome. Arguably five of the seven remaining games are winnable, so a repeat of 2023 DeVito-mania is not impossible. Bad news for the Giants’ draft position if so.

Jalin Hyatt (maybe)

Hyatt has not become the receiving threat that Giants’ fans, and Joe Schoen (who traded up to get him), hoped he’d be. Jones’ proclivity to throw short rather than airing it out may be part of the reason for Hyatt’s underwhelming numbers so far. Here are Hyatt’s numbers for the five games Jones started in 2023 before his first injury:

Five targets, four receptions, 99 yards

Now for the six games DeVito started:

15 targets, eight receptions, 129 yards

And the two games Tyrod Taylor started:

Six targets, four receptions, 30 yards

And the nine games he has played this season, all started by Jones:

12 targets, five receptions, 45 yards

DeVito has thrown to Hyatt about twice as often as Jones has over his two seasons. It will be interesting to see whether Hyatt becomes a greater participant in the offense with DeVito once again at the helm.

Losers

Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll

Schoen and Daboll were lauded as excellent choices to replace the failed Dave Gettleman-Joe Judge regime, and the 2022 season only burnished their reputations. Daboll had a history of developing quarterbacks, from Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa at Alabama to the wildly successful Josh Allen experiment in Buffalo. The 2022 season only added to his growing legend. Daboll and Mike Kafka designed an offense that put Jones in a position to do what he does best, and Jones responded well, getting the Giants off to a 6-1 start and eventually winning that thrilling playoff game in Minnesota. Daniel Jones remains the only NFC starting quarterback to ever defeat the Ravens with Lamar Jackson behind center. That legend has been tarnished, to say the least with Daboll’s inability to elevate Jones’ game to the level of the NFL’s best quarterbacks.

Schoen’s job was more tricky to execute. On Day 1 he was faced with deciding whether to pick up Jones’ fifth-year option. In retrospect, that would have been the right move but fans would have been up in arms if he’d done it after Jones’ 2020-2021 seasons and neck injury. Then after Jones’ unexpected 2022 success, he was in a defensive posture, having to negotiate a contract extension while simultaneously trying to extend Saquon Barkley, whose agents were seeking to get him into the Christian McCaffrey neighborhood. Again, in retrospect, tagging Jones would have been the right move, but it was a 50-50 proposition at the time. Schoen’s reputation has taken a hit over that, but it is not completely deserved – the contract allows him to walk away in 2025 with only $22M of dead money. If that number seems large, it pales in comparison to the $34M Howie Roseman had to swallow to get rid of Carson Wentz, and Roseman is now seen as a great GM.

Daniel Jones

Yes, Jones is both a winner and a loser. We looked at the bright side for him already. The downside, of course, is that his reputation, rising in 2022, has taken a huge hit, and it is not clear that anyone in the NFL will ever see him as anything more than a backup. Of more tangible interest to Jones, his benching and expected end-of-season release means he will never see a little less than half of the money in that $160M contract.

Drew Lock

Kyler Murray is having a resurgence this season, but boy, that 2019 QB class is looking pretty rough. It has to be a bit embarrassing for Lock to be signed as the backup QB and then be passed over for the third-string QB when the starter is finally benched.

We may never know the reason. Lock only saw the field once in a regular season game for the Giants, mopping up for Jones when the Eagles game got out of hand. He was pretty bad, going 3 of 8 for a total of 6 yards and 2 turnover-worthy plays. Still, that’s not much of a chance to show what you can do. Unfortunately, Lock was injured in the pre-season, limiting what Daboll could do with him. Based on Daboll’s selection of DeVito over Lock, you have to assume that Lock will be looking for work next season despite moments like his 2023 comeback victory over the Eagles on national TV.

Lock as a Giant was basically what he has always been – a QB who’s not afraid to throw downfield, but who just isn’t very accurate by the standards of today’s game. The big mystery is why Schoen felt he had to offer him $5M, an amount equal to what Andy Dalton, a more accomplished QB who has started a few games for Carolina this year, has gotten. The uncertainty in the timeline for Jones’ recovery from his ACL injury may have played a role.

Darius Slayton

This is a bit of a stretch, but Slayton by all indications is one of the good guys in the NFL, and he seems to have a close bond with Daniel Jones. They came into the league together in 2019, and Slayton has caught most of his NFL passes from Jones. Per giants.com:

In their six seasons together, Slayton has more receptions (181) for more yards (2,595) and more touchdowns (12) than any of the other 52 receivers who have caught at least one pass from Jones. And no one else is particularly close.

Slayton has always been a vocal defender of Jones against the slings and arrows others have sent his way, e.g., when Sauce Gardner seemed to make a veiled insult after the Giants-Jets joint practice this summer (not that Sauce has much to brag about himself this season). You have to think he, along with many of Jones’ other teammates who’ve been with him for a while, are having similar feelings about this turning point for the team.