As the hours tick by with the New York Giants awaiting word from a 41-year-old who quarterbacked a 5-12 team last season, there’s an inescapable feeling that they picked a terrible time to be on the hunt for a QB savior.
The Giants are in a particularly perilous position this offseason. The Daniel Jones experiment was a colossal failure, leaving them without a quarterback under contract aside from Tommy DeVito. DeVito’s most notable contributions in two years have been a celebratory gesture and an improbable three-game winning streak in 2023 that pushed the Giants out of range of landing a franchise quarterback in last year’s loaded draft.
Things went so far off the rails with Jones and everything around him the past two seasons that general manager Joe Schoen and coach Brian Daboll are on the hot seat entering Year 4. Co-owner John Mara’s postseason edict for an immediate turnaround has echoed for the past two months as Schoen has pursued every possible quarterback option.
“It better not take too long because I’ve just about run out of patience,” Mara said.
With that declaration removing any thought of a measured approach to the offseason, Schoen first applied the full-court press on Matthew Stafford when the Rams allowed the Super Bowl champ to explore his market value. The Giants were all-in on Stafford, prepared to sign the 37-year-old to a contract believed to be worth at least $50 million per year and to part with the necessary draft compensation to complete a trade.
But Stafford elected to remain in Los Angeles, which forced the Giants to pivot to Plan B. Aaron Rodgers, the aforementioned 41-year-old quarterback, has come into focus as that backup plan. Unsurprisingly, the courting of Rodgers has been shrouded in mystery.
First, some of the seats had to be claimed in the league-wide game of quarterback musical chairs. Geno Smith was traded from the Seahawks to the Raiders; Sam Darnold left the Vikings for the Seahawks; Jones left the Vikings for the Colts; and Justin Fields left the Steelers for the Jets. Those moves provided some clarity, narrowing Rodgers’ options to the Giants and Steelers, with the Vikings looming as a dark horse.
Rodgers officially became available Wednesday when the Jets released him at 4 p.m ET. But he had been free to negotiate with other teams since new Jets general manager Darren Mougey and coach Aaron Glenn announced their intention to move on from Rodgers on Feb. 13, as well as a willingness to eat $49 million in dead money over the next two years.
The new regime didn’t want to hitch its fortunes to Rodgers after his two seasons in New York were a total flop. Rodgers tore his Achilles four snaps into his much-hyped debut in the 2023 season opener after a blockbuster trade from the Packers. He returned last season and posted respectable numbers, but it wasn’t nearly enough to overcome a dysfunctional environment that led to the firings of coach Robert Saleh and general manager Joe Douglas.
That Schoen and Daboll are willing to attach their fate to the mercurial Rodgers after his flameout with the Jets demonstrates how desperate they are to find a quarterback.
It’s impossible to know how long Rodgers’ deliberations will take — he famously embarked on a four-day darkness retreat in 2023 to determine if he wanted to continue his Hall of Fame career. Once Rodgers announces his intentions, the Giants will have a road map. Either they’ll roll with Rodgers for at least one season, or they’ll direct their energy toward landing Russell Wilson, who visited the team last year before signing with the Steelers because he was informed he’d serve as Jones’ backup in New York.
The Giants aren’t sitting on their hands. They’re scheduled to host Wilson for a visit on Friday, according to a team source. Perhaps complicating matters for New York, the Browns will host Wilson for a visit on Thursday, league sources told The Athletic.
The drawn-out process involving big names has inflated the stakes of this quarterback search. Whether it’s Rodgers, Wilson or — gulp — someone further down the list of options, the Giants still need to accomplish Mara’s stated top priority: Finding the quarterback of the future.
Schoen and Daboll may be able to save their jobs by showing progress should Rodgers or Wilson lead the Giants to, say, seven wins in 2025. But neither is the long-term answer.
That solution will have to come via the draft. And the path to landing a quarterback there isn’t any clearer than this murky search for a suitable bridge QB.
The Titans hold the No. 1 pick, and all signs point to them taking Miami quarterback Cam Ward with that selection. The Titans haven’t been linked to any of the veteran quarterbacks on the market, and Will Levis, who went 2-10 last season, is the only QB on their roster.
The Titans entered free agency among the league leaders in cap space, but they have spent judiciously. Their only major investment was a four-year, $82 million contract for left tackle Dan Moore. They added veteran right guard Kevin Zeitler on a one-year, $9 million contract to fortify their offensive line.
The Titans are building an ecosystem to nurture a young quarterback. If they are sold on Ward, it could be a repeat of last year, when the Giants were unable to trade up from No. 6 to No. 3 because the Patriots were set on taking quarterback Drake Maye.
That’s where things could get really interesting. The Browns are a total wild card at the No. 2 pick. They could take a quarterback, as they need an off-ramp from the disastrous Deshaun Watson era.
Even if the Browns pass on a quarterback, there are questions if any other QBs in this class are even worthy of a top pick. The Giants showered attention on Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders during the fall, but it’s unclear if the twinkle in their eye has dimmed as the polarizing quarterback has been further dissected. Ole Miss’ Jaxson Dart’s stock appears to be going in the opposite direction, but taking him with the third pick would be a major reach. And if the Giants were sold on Sanders or Dart, would they be chasing aging quarterbacks so aggressively?
The Giants have the next six weeks to sort through their quarterback evaluations and chart a course of action for the draft. In the meantime, they await word from Rodgers. Unfortunately for them, they don’t have any other choice.
(Photo: Luke Hales / Getty Images)
