What are Giants doing? Not much, as NFL free agency kicks off
New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) stands with teammates before an NFL football game against the Miami Dolphins, Jan. 5, 2025, in East Rutherford, N.J. Credit: AP/Seth Wenig
Here’s the NFL’s biggest trade this offseason, although it won’t make the crawl at the bottom of your TV screen or instigate a social media boilover:
The Giants and Jets have swapped personalities.
Things had been teetering that way for a while, but with the opening of the league’s free-agency frenzy on Monday, it became abundantly clear that two teams that have always handled their business in very different ways have completed the exchange. It’s going to take some getting used to.
We now live in a world in which the Jets are making shrewd, pragmatic quarterback decisions, adding a low-risk, high-reward proven starter in Justin Fields. It’s not a sexy signing and it’s not going to earn them any prime-time schedule slots, but — get this — it could help them win some games.
It’s the kind of addition that the old headline-focused owner Woody Johnson would never have considered. That he clearly approved it is a positive indication that he is allowing his recently hired general manager and coach to run things based on football and not focus groups.
Meanwhile, the Giants are left flailing about, being clowned on by the rest of the league, and, as of Monday evening, beholden to the mood swings and impulses of Aaron Rodgers.
By the time most of the rest of the league was getting their dinner orders delivered to their front-office war rooms, the Giants were waiting to see which quarterback option they’d be left with — if anyone — when the music stopped and all of the seats were filled.
General manager Joe Schoen faced the possibility that for the second year in a row, he could find himself being unable to strike a franchise-altering deal for a quarterback at the end of one of the key roster-building periods.
Last spring, he was boxed out of selecting one of the young draft picks he and coach Brian Daboll clearly coveted, and this time, the two of them might run out of letters to name their contingency plans — what are we up to now, Plan F? Plan G? H? — before they find someone who’ll hop aboard their floundering canoe.
As night set on the Giants in East Rutherford and Fields, Sam Darnold (who agreed to terms with Seattle) and many other options dried up, the general thinking was that they would like to sign Rodgers but had yet to convince him to sign with them.
It was a tough sell because the Giants don’t have as much talent as, say, last year’s Jets team, which Rodgers led to a whopping five wins. They also are likely to pick a quarterback very high in the draft next month, which could have Rodgers facing a benching by around midseason if he can’t get the Giants straightened out quickly.
Not a very appetizing landing spot for a future Hall of Famer, especially one with enough money and side pursuits to avoid being swayed by the addition of dollars to the bid.
Rodgers’ other options appeared to include the Steelers (Fields’ most recent team) and perhaps the Vikings.
If Rodgers picks Pittsburgh, then Russell Wilson becomes an option for the Giants; the Steelers likely would keep him if they can’t upgrade to Rodgers. But the Titans also could be interested in Wilson if he is free.
Then there was old pal Daniel Jones trying to decide among his limited options. If he returns to the Vikings, then Rodgers’ landing spots become Pittsburgh and New York. If Jones goes elsewhere, Rodgers could follow the Brett Favre Plan from the Packers to the Jets to the Vikings . . . who clearly are the most talented team in the quarterback marketplace.
What a mess.
And that doesn’t even take into account the Giants’ failed attempts to add Matthew Stafford in a deal with the Rams late last month.
After two decades of relative quarterback stability — defined, generously, in this case, as going into the offseason with a pretty good idea of who your Week 1 starter is going to be — the Giants now find themselves rudderless at the most important position in the sport.
Monday, then, was just a taste of what the Giants can expect if they wind up living in Rodgers’ warped world in which he calls the shots, controls the tempo and bends the franchise to his liking.
The Jets’ new regime decided that wasn’t for them. The Giants are desperate enough to accept those terms, even hope for them. So were Joe Douglas and Robert Saleh, and look where it got them.
Now, all is not lost. Teams can turn themselves and the narratives around them very quickly. All along, the most important quarterback acquisition for Schoen was going to come in April, not March. Is there a scenario in which the Giants sign an uninspiring veteran such as Gardner Minshew, Marcus Mariota or Jameis Winston, go on to draft Cam Ward or Shedeur Sanders, and by 2028 are tickled that they did?
Of course.
As of Monday night, though, there was much more disappointment in whom the Giants didn’t yet have than excitement about whom they might soon get.
The Jets landed their quarterback. They found some sanity, if not necessarily star power.
The Giants? They continued to look like a team that doesn’t quite know exactly what it wants, can’t say why it wants it and, worse yet, has no idea how to achieve it.
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.
