The New York Giants find themselves between a rock and a hard place when it comes to finding their next starting quarterback. Daniel Jones now plays for the Indianapolis Colts after finishing last season with the Minnesota Vikings. Tommy DeVito is back, but nobody outside of the tristate area rea seems to care about that. What people do seem care about is if Aaron Rodgers is coming or not.
According to Pat Leonard of the New York Daily News, there is a growing sense that Rodgers is not all that interested in swapping MetLife allegiances to play for the Giants. The New York Jets have moved on from Rodgers in favor of Justin Fields this offseason. Rodgers is deciding between playing for the Giants, the Vikings, the Pittsburgh Steelers or outright retiring after his turbulent tenure with the Jets.
If that is the case, then it leads me to believe that the Giants will sign another aging veteran quarterback like Russell Wilson or Joe Flacco before taking a huge gamble in the 2025 NFL Draft. Rodgers was the team's best chance, however slim, to compete in 2025; with that option off the table, the best chance for Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll to keep their jobs is to pivot toward the future.
But while the Giants do have the No. 3 overall pick, this seems to be a two-quarterback draft with Miami's Cam Ward expected to go No. 1 to Tennessee and Colorado's Shedeur Sanders likely to Cleveland at No. 2. This all points to the Giants reaching on someone like Jaxson Dart out of Ole Miss inside the top 40, a mistake that fans should be all too familiar with.
Why the New York Giants reaching on Jaxson Dart might be a bad thing
Look. If the Giants were to end up with Rodgers, that would be ideal. You could hope that he returns to Pro Bowl form in his early 40s, while preventing the Giants from wasting the No. 3 overall pick on a quarterback who would not go inside the top 25 in most drafts. Rodgers knows he is getting up there in age. New York may be in a better spot to draft its next franchise quarterback in the 2026 NFL Draft.
Should Rodgers stink, well, the Giants will be picking at the top of the draft again next year, when guys like Arch Manning might be available. New York grossly reached on Jones out of Duke over half a decade ago. He had the David Cutcliffe gold seal of approval. Just because he played for Eli Manning's college coach did not mean he was ever going to be the stuff of legend. He was a decent player, but put into a difficult spot.
To me, if the Giants were to end up drafting someone like Dart out of Ole Miss, Quinn Ewers out of Texas or Jalen Milroe out of Alabama, I would hope it would be a Day Two selection. What should be noted is those prospects should be viewed like Drew Lock was coming out of Missouri in the same 2019 NFL Draft. He can have an NFL career, but banking on him to be year starter is tough sledding.
Overall, the Giants do not really owe it to themselves to let Daboll and Schoen do whatever it is they do around here any more. This is a team that passed on three potential franchise quarterbacks last spring in Michael Penix Jr., J.J. McCarthy and Bo Nix in favor of taking one of Jayden Daniels' weapons out of LSU in Malik Nabers. They had their chance to fix it, and they blew it!
If the goal is for Dart or whoever to become Derek Carr, Andy Dalton or Jimmy Garoppolo, you lose.