The New York Giants woes continued this past weekend as quarterback Daniel Jones left the team’s 30-6 loss to the Raiders with a non-contact injury.
The club believes that Jones suffered a torn ACL on the play, but will have the QB undergo an MRI Monday to confirm the diagnosis. The 26 year old was making his first start in nearly a month after sitting out the previous 3 games with a neck injury.
“Tough. You never want your guys to go down,” coach Brian Daboll said after the game. “He’s worked really hard to get back. It’s unfortunate.”
“He felt like he buckled,” Daboll continued. “And then he was running it off. We went over and talked to him and he said, ‘Nah, I’m good.’ Then went back in and obviously he wasn’t.”
If a torn ACL is indeed the diagnosis, then Jones’ season would be over leaving the team in a precarious position at quarterback. Backup QB Tyrod Taylor was placed on IR with a rib injury, and will be sidelined until at least December 11th. Meanwhile, 3rd stringer Tommy DeVito has struggled in limited action, to the tune of 174 yards passing, 1TD and 2INTs over the last two games. Given that the trade deadline has now passed as well, New York’s options are even further limited to replace Jones under centre.
Jones, along with the rest of the 2-7 Giants, has struggled this season as both bad breaks, and bizarre coaching decisions have them staring at a high draft pick as opposed to a return to the postseason in 2023.
The former 6th overall pick from 2019 has thrown for 909 yards, 2TDs, and 6INTs on the year. Making matters worse amongst the notoriously impatient New York fanbase is the fact that Jones signed a 4 year, $160M contract extension with the club in March, making him a top 10 paid quarterback in the league.
This financial commitment to the former Duke signal caller put the team behind the 8 ball in contract negotiations with star running back Saquon Barkley, leading to a prolonged standoff between the two camps.
New York will now have to make some tough decisions over the 2nd half of the season. With their playoff hopes all but extinguished at this point, the club is playing more for a draft pick than anything else.
Giants GM Joe Schoen was one of many NFL executives on site for the college football showdown between USC and Washington this past weekend. A matchup that included two of the country’s top QB prospects in Caleb Williams and Michael Penix Jr.
Should the G-Men bottom out this season, there’s a very real possibility that the Daniel Jones experiment could quickly be coming to a close in the Big Apple.
-Kyle Skinner
Twitter: @JKyleSkinner
Photo: All-Pro Reels. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.