Think The Giants Overpaid Daniel Jones? Think Again
Casual NFL fans had a field day when the New York Giants paid quarterback Daniel Jones a king’s ransom to be their quarterback for the next four seasons. The fallout is mixed reviews, but some think the Giants overpaid Daniel Jones.
I’m not saying $40 million per season isn’t a lot of money. It sure is. But that’s not the way this contract is structured.
In 2023, the cap hit the Giants will take for Jones’ salary is around $19 million, per Jeremy Fowler. The team didn’t drop all their cap space this year on Jones’ salary.
All of the $82 million of guaranteed money in this contract comes during the first two seasons of the contract. That means the Giants can have an easy out after the first two years if things aren’t working.
The Giants needed to pay Daniel Jones for them to have a successful offseason. This was plan A. Not necessarily strictly because of Jones, but of what happened next. Within five minutes of the Jones deal being secured, the team secured Saquon Barkley to the non-exclusive franchise tag.
Building the contract this way and having one more year of Jones and Barkley in the backfield was crucial for New York to bring in free agents. Now, Joe Schoen and Co. can go out and invest in pieces that can actually make the team better.
They brought back the guys that brought that offense to the playoffs last season. Not to mention the same two guys that led the fourth-leading rushing offense in the entire league. That’s higher than the Philadelphia Eagles, by the way.
Everyone knows Daniel Jones and Brian Daboll‘s marriage worked out perfectly. Jones played the best ball of his career with Daboll and Mike Kafka calling plays.
People look at counting stats and they try to tell a story. Jones only had 15 passing touchdowns? Well, you have to add on the two postseason scores and the seven rushing touchdowns. That gives him 24 total.
The biggest gripe on Jones until last season was his turnovers. If you don’t think coaching makes a difference, just remember that Jones had the lowest interception ratio in the entire NFL last season at 1.1%.
What about six fourth quarter/game-winning drives to win games? He had five of those in seven games, by the way.
The career-high 3,205 passing yards were nice, but don’t forget about the fifth-in-the-league 708 rushing yards. That was more satisfying for Giants fans. What about leading the team in rushing yards in his first career playoff game, breaking playoff records in the process, oh and by the way, winning the game on the road?
All with Isaiah Hodgins, Richie James, Daniel Bellinger, and Kenny Golladay (who caught two passes from Jones all season.)
Get this man the receivers that these other quarterbacks have and he can only blossom.
At the end of the day, you’re only successful in the NFL if you have a proven quarterback that can actually put your team on his back. There’s a reason this is a quarterback’s league at the end of the day. There’s a reason why the guys like Jones get $160 million.
I prompt the people who think the Giants overpaid Jones to ask yourselves this: What else would the Giants have done? If they didn’t sign Jones long-term, they would have had to give him a franchise tag or let him walk. That means you’d have to pay Barkley long-term, which is a cap death sentence for an aging running back. Or you could let Barkley walk, who was the heartbeat of your offense last season.
But let’s just say they gave a contract to Barkley and tagged Jones. That’s putting your eggs in the basket of a running back while giving your quarterback $32 million for one season, far less than the $19 million cap hit that Jones will take in 2022.
What about if they let Jones walk? There’s no replacement for him. What are you going to do? Draft one at 25th overall? You’re not going to get a top-tier quarterback there, especially not one of the caliber of Jones.
But you don’t know the Giants overpaid Daniel Jones. Well, find me a quarterback that won a playoff game, started and played in every single game, played at an extremely high level, crushed his biggest weakness, and whose first-year coach won Coach of the Year.
If nothing else, locking up Daboll with a quarterback who has proven himself in his system is all Giants fans can ask for.
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