The New York Giants made a long-awaited move on Tuesday morning, benching veteran Eli Manning in favor of rookie first-round pick Daniel Jones.
It’s a move the Giants should have made out of the gate if they were only going to give Manning a two-week leash and a noncompetitive team, but that’s a debate for another day. For right now, it’s all about the future.
Sadly, the immediate future is going to be filled with more of the same kind of losing. After years of trying to win while rebuilding, the Giants gave up on that foolish notion and now enter a complete rebuild mode. They will let it fly with their rookies, and no amount of growing pains will alter that approach.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that the Giants, who are 8-25 since 2017 (the worst record in the NFL), aren’t going to magically become competitors. Rather, it remains very possible they regress by a substantial margin.
As impressive as Jones looked throughout the preseason, he was going up against depth players — many of whom are no longer in the NFL — and defensive coordinators who weren’t game-planning at all. Now he’ll be going up against the most elite players on the planet and against defensive coordinators who scheme specifically to take his head off.
Already dealing with a fumbling issue, Jones will be thrown completely into the fire without his No. 1 wide receiver, Golden Tate, and potentially without the team’s next-best receivers — Sterling Shepard and Cody Latimer, who are both in concussion protocol.
Meanwhile, Jones isn’t capable of playing safety or rushing the passer, so he’ll have to try to make up for a defense giving up 30-plus points per game.
It’s a bad mix, but the Giants have no one but themselves and management (both previous and current) to blame. They’re in a deep hole, they lack quality depth, their defense is in shambles, their rookies are swimming and now they’re going with a quarterback who at the time of the NFL Draft, was considered a laughable pick.
We know now that Jones isn’t laughable, but these Giants are about to be. Still, there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel, and I fully believe Jones will eventually lead the Giants back to the promised land. We just have to bear the torment that will come first.
