The Obvious Offseason Move Giants Must Make

As the New York Giants' historically bad 3-14 season showed, the organization has a lot of work to properly retool the roster with capable talent to perform better in the 2025 campaign.

While holes are found up and down the ranks, the quarterback position remains at the forefront. After dismissing Daniel Jones after six years as the franchise starter midway through the season, Drew Lock is also on the cusp of entering free agency, and the Giants are left with only one arm in Tommy DeVito, who doesn’t have a real future as the team’s chosen one.

With the free agent window and the 2025 NFL Draft drawing closer once the Super Bowl in New Orleans concludes this week, general manager Joe Shoen and head coach Brian Daboll have to put their heads down and utilize their assets to find the pieces that will strengthen their roster in what needs to be an improvement year for both of them.

According to NFL.com senior writer Kevin Patra’s list for each NFC team, the first and obvious move they should make is to develop and execute their plan to double-dip and bring two new quarterbacks onto the team via the two offseason time markers.

“How many Our Fathers, Hail Marys and Glory Bes will it take from Giants fans for one of the top two QBs -- Miami's Cam Ward or Colorado's Shedeur Sanders -- to fall to No. 3? With no quarterback under contract, Big Blue must revamp the entire room,” Patra said.

“It's a tricky proposition to need to hit on the most important/difficult position in sports when your head coach and general manager are sitting squarely on the hot seat. There can be no more swings and misses.”

The New York Giants took almost six seasons before realizing that Daniel Jones was not their long-term answer at quarterback. | Robert Deutsch-Imagn Images

Patra goes on to suggest that the Giants should follow in the footsteps of the “Minnesota model” that played out with the Minnesota Vikings this past season, signing the seventh-year journeyman Sam Darnold in free agency before settling on rookie gunslinger J.J. McCarthy with the 10th overall pick in the 2024 draft who ended up missing the entire season with a torn Achilles.

The Vikings’ initial plan was likely to let McCarthy start the season under center while having Darnold as an insurance policy and a mentor to back up the novice. The former role would end up playing out, and Darnold became the team’s starter for the season en route to a career-high passing display that won 14 games and took Minnesota to the postseason.

That similar scenario could play out in a different way for the Giants this offseason. They certainly have to bring in a veteran quarterback off of the open market to accompany a potential rookie prospect, and Darnold is a name being thrown around, albeit if the Giants want to oblige paying a higher market value for his services compared to what they doled out for Lock last offseason.

However, there is the real possibility that New York doesn’t get their hands on one of the top two most coveted quarterbacks in April–Shedeur Sanders or Cam Ward–if the Titans and Browns decide to steal both of them off the board before the No. 3 pick.

If that were to happen, Schoen and Daboll would be thrown into a tricky situation that they must navigate carefully.

They need to find answers to fill the barren quarterback room right now, but if there is anything that the organization has learned from the Daniel Jones era, you can’t perform a reach just to satisfy the commands from above.

There are a slew of other names on the draft board, like Ole Miss’s Jaxson Dart and Alabama’s Jalen Milroe, who could be available later on and have been recently mocked as late as the third round.

While that would be a tough sell to the fanbase, which is getting impatient with the lack of a true franchise successor at quarterback, it might be wiser for the Giants to trade down and procure a quarterback in the second round with some additional draft picks to use on the other areas of their roster.

Trading up is also an option, but giving up a bevy of selections to fulfill one need with the right guy can also be a dangerous prospect. As Patra said, the Giants must pray that some noise surrounding players like Travis Hunter and Abdul Carter sway one of the two teams ahead of them away from considering Sanders or Ward as consecutive selections.

Beyond all that, it doesn’t hurt to have another veteran answer who can step in and play immediately if the Giants determine that the rookie isn’t ready for NFL competition. In that regard, there are a couple names that could make sense in talent and money, such as one of the Steelers’ free agents in Russell Wilson or Justin Fields or the Browns’ Jameis Winston who is eager for a job.

Fields has the biggest upside of those options with his dual-threat abilities. He led the Steelers to a 4-2 start this past season while Wilson was sidelined with an injury, notching 1,106 yards, five touchdowns, and only one interception while adding another 289 yards and five scores on the ground.

Daboll, a proclaimed quarterback developer, could take Fields’s skillset and strengthen it to elevate the Giants' offensive attack. He seems to have admired the quarterback since his early days with the Chicago Bears.

Either way, this is a non-negotiable move for the Giants to check off this offseason, as without a strong quarterback room, the rest of the huddle falls apart. The best outcome is for them to land two arms with the draft closely behind and have a nice competition rolling into training camp this summer.

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