Super Bowl 2025: Carson Wentz or Kenny Pickett could provide short-term relief for Giants

NEW ORLEANS — The Giants shouldn’t be looking for a quarterback this offseason. They need to be looking for two. The more high-profile search will take place through the draft where the organization will be hoping to find a player — perhaps with the third overall pick, perhaps earlier or later — who can come in and lead the team for a decade or more.

Ideally, the other hunt will be in free agency where the prey will be a veteran who can help them right away for a period of time until the rookie is ready to take over. They won’t be looking to sell the proverbial bridge in Brooklyn, they’ll be trying to buy a bridge quarterback for East Rutherford. Someone to get them through the now and not be a burden on the later.

Might that Giants quarterback of the immediate and short-term future be right here in Super Bowl LIX?

No, not Patrick Mahomes or Jalen Hurts. Their teams won’t be looking to move on from them no matter how Sunday’s game turns out.

But Carson Wentz, the former starter and MVP candidate for Philadelphia and current Kansas City backup who will become a free agent in March, is someone the Giants should investigate. He has experience, success, skill, and a likely price tag that could make him a good fit for what Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll are trying to accomplish.

Plus he wants a shot at starting again.

“As a competitor you want to play,” Wentz said on Wednesday. “At the end of the day, I am still motivated. There is a difference between having peace and being complacent or content. I’m still motivated, I’m still a competitor, I’m still confident, all those things. . . . Everybody wants to play but you make the most of the opportunity and I’m grateful for this one.”

The problem for the Giants, though, is that Wentz and his ilk of also-rans, not-quite-busts and aging last-rodeo-riders the team will be sorting through is doing their own investigating too. They’re looking for places where they can get opportunities not just to play but succeed. They want to become the next Sam Darnold or Baker Mayfield and go someplace they can be rebirthed as a star.

“It just shows those guys have always been talented,” he said of the recent turnarounds. “If you get in the right fit, the right situation, a lot of things can happen, a lot of good things can happen. You definitely see it from afar and you think about it.”

In that regard, the Giants may not be all that appealing of an option.

Consider what Wentz said on Wednesday when asked why he came to Kansas City last offseason:

“There are lots of different (opportunities). I was in a unique situation being a starter for all those years and once Kansas City called it was very intriguing. It was a chance to work with one of the greatest coaches ever (Andy Reid), work behind one of the greatest quarterbacks ever (Mahomes). A unique situation there. A culture of excellence was very intriguing to me. I made that decision. I think it’s been a perfect fit for me.”

Can the Giants offer anything close to that? Not now. In the draft, you take a player and he has little choice where he winds up. In this process the player has much more power over his landing spot.

Wentz wouldn’t entertain speculation regarding his future employer.

“There are a lot of things to worry about after this week so I’m locked in ready to go here,” he said of preparing for the Super Bowl. “We’ll see. I’ll think about that in a couple of weeks.”

Wentz won’t be the only quarterback weighing options that will include the Giants. Jameis Winston asked Saquon Barkley earlier this week where he should sign as a free agent this offseason and the former Giants running back said: “New York needs a quarterback now.”

There will be others, too, including Justin Fields, Kirk Cousins, and potentially even Super Bowl champs such as Matthew Stafford and Russell Wilson if a trade is something the Giants want to pursue.

Eagles backup Kenny Pickett, a first-round pick of the Steelers in 2022, won’t be a free agent until next offseason but he knows that his future is likely to be as a bridge quarterback too . . . even if he doesn’t quite know what that means.

“That’s a media term that I’ve seen thrown around,” he said. “But if a guy goes in there and plays well there’s really no bridge. He’s the guy. The best guy will play in this business. That’s how I would approach any opportunity like that. I would go in and compete and try to play.”

Wentz would certainly approach it the same way.

It doesn’t have to be a dead-end job of course. When the Giants drafted Eli Manning in 2004 they also signed Super Bowl champion Kurt Warner. His stint in New York was one brief year — Warner started nine games before the team turned everything over to Manning — after which Warner went on to lead the Cardinals to a Super Bowl appearance and become a Hall of Famer.

Maybe that can happen for Wentz, too. He already has a ring as the starter for most of the Eagles’ Super Bowl year in 2017 when he had Philadelphia at 11-2 before tearing his ACL in December and yielding the position to Nick Foles. He could win one on Sunday against his former team as a backup to Mahomes, too.

“No one comes into the league getting drafted where you get drafted looking for that,” he said of being a second-stringer, “but at the same time, it’s the hand I’ve been dealt. It’s a business and I am grateful to still be playing at my age. Still loving it, still having a good time with it. This has been a fun year.”

Does that mean he’d be open to any potential overtures from the Giants?

“We’ll cross that bridge in a little while,” Wentz said.

Or, perhaps, become the bridge himself.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.