Tommy DeVito's win over Packers a year ago likely hurt Giants' chances at future quarterback

There weren’t many people wishing each other a Happy DeVitoversary during a gloomy Wednesday at the Giants’ facility during which their quarterback vortex continued to spiral and their prospects for Sunday’s home game against the Ravens continued to dim. The point spread even jumped a point and a half up to 16.

But a year ago spirits around the organization were extremely high.

Dec. 11, 2023, was the night when Saquon Barkley scored two touchdowns and Tommy DeVito engineered a 24-22 comeback win over the Packers at MetLife Stadium. It capped a three-game winning streak with the rookie at quarterback, improved the team’s record to 5-8, kept their postseason odds afloat (their chance stood at 4% following the victory) and allowed fans to flirt with the idea that they might have seen their future in an unlikely undrafted passer… all with the satisfying aroma of sausage and peppers and chicken cutlets cooking in the parking lot.

DeVito, for one, knew about the This Date in History reference and the peak of his popularity because he got alerts on his social media feeds about it.

“A picture of me and Wan’Dale (Robinson) popped up on my phone,” he said. “We were kind of talking about it earlier… There was a lot of good, a lot of bad in that game, but ultimately came out with a win, especially on a Monday night. Awesome atmosphere. It was just a lot of fun.”

Those were good times. Compared to where the Giants are now, they were distant, practically glorious times. Too bad those joyous sentiments must not be allowed to return. At least not yet.

This 100th season celebration has already fizzled into deep despair. It must be salvaged with more losing so that the second century of Giants football can begin on proper footing.

The hard reality from that Packers win, and the two which preceded it against the Commanders and Patriots, turned out to be that it cost the Giants an opportunity to draft a new, true franchise quarterback the following spring. Those results coupled with an even more Pyrrhic win in the finale against the Eagles pushed the team back in the draft order by one game – behind those same Commanders and Patriots who they had beaten and felt good about doing so at the time – and prevented them from selecting Jayden Daniels or Drake Maye, either of whom would now have the future outlook for this franchise pointed on a very different vector.

At the time it was understandable. The Giants were projected to have the sixth overall pick back then, not the first or second, and it’s exactly where they wound up, just outside that inner circle of lottery winners and with a difficult choice of potentially reaching for another option at the position (J.J. McCarthy, Bo Nix or Michael Penix Jr.) or selecting a player who might be able to help Daniel Jones succeed (which they did with Malik Nabers). They were still fighting for a mathematical opportunity at a postseason berth, still less than a year removed from a playoff win. Losing might have been more fortuitous than it seemed, but tanking would have been unthinkable.

That’s not the world these Giants live in right now. They are out of the playoff picture. They are vying for one of the top two draft spots. They are 100% in the market for a new quarterback (or two) by the time this offseason concludes.

And contrary to logic, the worse these Giants finish, the more likely it could be that ownership decides to keep Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll for next season. They were brought here to do what they did together in Buffalo: Scout and find a young quarterback, groom him, and lift the organization into perennial contender. If the Giants aren’t going to be able to draft a quarterback in April and give them the opportunity to finally put their initial mandate into motion, then why bother keeping them?

To be clear, no one on the field Sunday will be trying to lose on purpose, nor should they ever be asked to. There is too much at stake for them and their futures in this league, and they are prideful men to begin with. Any quick glance at the anguished Daboll during this past Sunday’s loss to the Saints tells you that he wants to win. Something in his competitive soul needs to win. He is not conflicted over that one little bit.

But there are other parts of the organization at work, too. Just as Daboll said he is concentrating on this team and not yet paying attention to any of the college quarterbacks he’ll likely spend the coming months carving up, there are arms of the Giants that are taking the exact opposite approach and contemplating the future while ignoring the present. At some point in the next few weeks those departments will merge. What Daboll achieves now will impact what Schoen and the other crystal ballers will face then.

So the Giants have to thread this tricky needle just so. They can’t be embarrassed or outclassed, can’t look as if they have given up. But at the same time it will behoove the team to lose every one of these final four games remaining in 2024. With DeVito starting, Tim Boyle in the wings, and a host of other injuries to key starters, it shouldn’t be too hard. Then again, a year ago, DeVito gave the Giants one of their best wins on the schedule… and one of their worst.

Daboll was asked on Wednesday if he feels he needs to prove anything to ownership during this next month of play.

“Just trying to get a win,” he said.

Trying is good. That’s what they need to do. But actually getting one now? That could wind up being a new low point during this sad year saturated by them.

Because no one wants to get an alert on their phone on Dec. 15, 2025, and wonder what might have been.

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.