As Giant’s quarterback Daniel Jones enters his sixth year in 2024 the winds of quarterback controversy are swirling amongst Giant’s fans. Many feel that five years was enough and are eager to draft a replacement quarterback even if it means giving up draft picks to move up. The word filtering out from the Giant’s organization is that they are not ready to move on from Jones and believe in him.
Before dealing with that let us first take a look at the team makeup of the Giants and the recent two Super Bowl contestants. I have created a spreadsheet using the Pro Football Focus team lineup charts with grades and position rankings of team players. The spreadsheet can be accessed here
Giants And Super Bowl Teams spreadsheet download
Here is a a snapshot of it
The spreadsheet shows each starting or main contributing player, their PFF grade and the rank of the player for their position in the league. Keep in mind these are not all the players on the team , just the starters or high contributors. From the rank it calculates the top column which shows the player position in the top X percent for that position. The table is sorted by ascending top percentage so the best players are at the top. The top column is color coded showing the following
aqua – top 10%
green – top 25%
blue – top 50%
yellow – bottom 25%
red – bottom 10%
It easily identifies the large gap between the players of each team. The 49ers had no players in the bottom 10% of the league for their position. Whereas the Giants have seven. Looking at the positions that seven on the Giants include 4 of the 5 offensive linemen. Also these rankings are based solely on the 2023 season. In the Giants position rank column I highlighted in red areas of concern for players in the bottom 10 or 25%. As mentioned the offensive line players are one area. Also highlighted are the quarterback, edge rush and cornerback positions. The Chiefs had a exceptional cornerback group and that showed. The 49ers had a great pair of pass rushers which was also evident in the game.
The Giants had only one receiver that just hit the top 50% and one tight end just making the top 25% that missed five games this season due to injury. I also point out the Giant’s running back, Barkley. He fails to hit the top 50% and will probably expect and be offered big money this offseason. It may be time to let him walk and look to the draft to replace.
The highlight of yellow in the Chief’s POS column just highlights positions where they significantly excel over the Giants. The highlight in the 49ers Player column shows the following
yellow – player acquired in the draft
blue – player acquired in a trade
green – player acquired in free agency
One can see the 49ers have built a great team primarily through the draft. Many of the top players were drafted in later rounds, including the quarterback.
To further highlight how historically bad the Giants have become one need only to look at the defense and offense team rankings at profootballreference.com . According to those rankings the 2023 Giants team is the third worst team in Giants history. The rankings have an offense and defense rank among league teams for both points and yards, either attained on offense or allowed on defense. This ranking goes back to 1925. I summed the team ranks and divided the sum by the number of teams in the league for a given season. This gives a number from 0 to 4 with 4 being the worst rank in each of the four categories. Here are the three worst seasons sorted in descending starting with the worst.
The reason I digress into this comparison is to show that the Giants have many areas/positions that need improvement to attain a Super Bowl title. The 49er’s went 2-14 in 2016 and had none of the franchise players they have today. Three years later they were in the Super Bowl. I am hopeful the Giants can do likewise to continue their sole streak of winning a Super Bowl in each decade since the 1980’s. So I strongly feel that it is in their bests interest not to give up valuable draft picks to move up for a quarterback. They need every pick they can get and like the 49ers use them wisely. In fact I am a big proponent of the Giants trading back in the draft to acquire more picks. There was a study done by economists that defended the draft is at best a gamble and you increase your chance of success by making more picks.
If you look at the Chiefs with Mahomes and Purdy with the 49ers, both quarterbacks were drafted into teams that were good. This gave them the opportunity to excel early in their careers. The Chiefs had an offensive line that was ranked 14th by PFF the season before Mahomes was drafted and eleventh in 2018 when he took over. The year he was drafted they had Pro Bowlers of tight end Travis Kelce, wide receiver Tyreek Hill and running back Kareem Hunt on the team. With the 49ers the year Brock Purdy was drafted the 2023 Super Bowl Team was in place and they had been to the Conference Championship Game the prior season. These rookie quarterbacks were set up for success. The teams had done their preparation.
On the other hand the NFL history is littered with good quarterbacks that wasted away on bad teams. It is easy to come up with a list of
Tony Romo DAL
Carson Palmer CIN
Matt Ryan ATL
Matthew Stafford DET
Phillip Rivers SD
Derek Carr OAK
Andrew Luck IND
Cam Newton CAR
Ryan Tannehill MIA
without having to go back in history to dig up such stories as Archie Manning on the Saints. The game is a team sport and does not rely on one player. You would be hard pressed to come up with a quarterback that carried a bad team and probably none that won a Super Bowl.
Looking at the Giants’ roster compared to Super Bowl teams and the number of coaches and systems Daniel Jones has had to play with, it is a tribute to Jones that he has come to practice hard every day, not complain, and not blame others. He just does his job, takes the hits and keeps fighting. You can see that character in his play when down any score in any meaningless game he will still put himself on the line and run thru players to make a a first down. I have wavered back on forth on Jones, at times thinking time to move on. But if the Giants organization believes in him and wants to give him the benefit of the doubt that he can be that guy then I am good with it. Let’s get some great players around him. Even if Jones does not work out we are still building that Super Bowl team in our draft picks, free agency additions and trades.
Nevertheless I also believe that a team should always look to draft a quarterback. Green Bay does a good job at this. That is how they had Aaron Rodgers and Jordan Love waiting in the wings when they already had a good quarterback. A late round quarterback I like would be Jordan Travis who played on Florida State and got a season ending injury in November. He is a dual threat quarterback. In NCAA stats Travis is 5th in active career leaders in passing yards per attempt with 8.49 yards. Travis is 19th in active career leaders in passing efficiency with a 150.62 career efficiency. Also Travis is 10th in active career leaders in total yards for players with 4,000 yards passing and 1000 yards rushing. Travis was second among top nine draft prospect quarterbacks in the following career stats: rushing TDs per game (0.63), gain per rush (4.7 yards), points per game (3.92) and total TDs scored per game (0.653). Travis was third among the top nine prospect quarterbacks in rushing yards per game (39.8).
Two of Travis’s best performances came when one of FSU’s top receivers, Johnny Wilson, missed both games due to injury. The Seminoles’ other star receiver, Keon Coleman, sat out against Pitt. Two other receivers on the depth chart, co-starter Destyn Hill and five-star freshman Hykeem Williams, couldn’t play at Wake Forest, while Lakewood High alumnus Deuce Spann was sidelined against the Panthers. Even with all those injuries, Travis responded with his two most prolific games of the season. He passed for a season-high 359 yards against the Demon Deacons, then broke that mark by throwing for 360 at Pitt. He accounted for six touchdowns to help No. 4 FSU remain perfect heading into Saturday’s rivalry game against Miami. His first six completions at Pitt went to six different receivers. Before he went down with the injury Travis was undefeated in 2023 at 10-0. Right before the injury FanDuel had him as third bests odds to win the Heisman Trophy. One of the skills of Travis based on draft reports is his ability to put receivers in a better position to gain additional yardage after the catch by leading the receiver. That is a great skill that the Giants could use. What may be due to his injury you do not hear much hype about Travis and he be may be somewhat overlooked. He could be available with a late pick.
2/18 Update.
The order of preference in the draft are
- Stay at pick six and select either Caleb Williams or Jayden Daniels if they fall.
- Trade down for more picks in rounds 2-4 and select Jordan Travis in the 4-5th rounds.
To wrap up lets go Giants! Start building that Super Bowl Team. The 2020’s clock is ticking. Don’t be one of those teams that is a quarterback graveyard. Build a team that any quarterback would want to play for.
