The New York Giants waived Daniel Jones on Friday, four days after benching him in favor of Tommy DeVito, and a day after they had him working on the scout team at safety.
Jones had a 24-44-1 record during his four years with the Giants, and he was 2-8 this season when he got benched. The move was likely financially motivated, as Jones had guarantees in 2025 that would have been triggered if he suffered a serious injury at some point the rest of the season and could not pass a physical in March. The Giants selected Jones sixth overall in the 2019 NFL Draft, a move that was considered by most at the time as a reach, and then stuck with him for six years. In fairness to Jones, the Giants were never able to field a quality offensive line in front of him, or provide him with quality receivers to throw to.
Jones will be subject to waivers, and there's no shot in hell that any team will claim him and the awful contract that would accompany him. Jones will then become an unrestricted free agent, free to sign with any team. According to Pro Football Talk, "the Giants will be entitled to an offset for anything he earns elsewhere," which means that Jones will almost certainly sign for the minimum wherever he lands, since the Giants are paying for him otherwise.
If you look around the league there are a number of playoff contenders with untested or shaky backups, where Jones would make sense, like the Ravens (Josh Johnson), Dolphins (Skylar Thompson), 49ers (Brandon Allen), or Lions (Hendon Hooker), to name a few.
But what about the Eagles? The backups are currently Kenny Pickett and Tanner McKee. There's a pretty solid argument to be made that McKee outperformed Pickett in the preseason games, and in my opinion, McKee was also better than Pickett in training camp. And yet, Pickett remained the No. 2 behind Jalen Hurts. Was that because Pickett has 24 career starts under his belt, and McKee has no regular season game experience at all? Perhaps.
Well, Jones has 69 starts under his belt, he arguably has more talent than Pickett, and he is closer stylistically to Hurts because of his running ability, and wouldn't require the Eagles throw out big chunks of their playbook if he had to play. He is also widely considered a good culture guy, even if career has been unsuccessful so far. If you think you can get Jones up to speed quickly and you're willing to eat a small cap hit on Pickett, then why not swap Pickett for Jones? 🤷♂️
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