The Daniel Jones – Saquon Barkley Contract Debate Rages On

It’s been months since the Giants settled with quarterback Daniel Jones on a new four-year $160 million contract and several weeks since running back Saquon Barkley had his epiphany about playing on a modified franchise tag, and yet, as the Giants offense has gotten off to a slow start this season, the debate about whether the team should have taken care of Barkley first and Jones second continues to rage on in some circles.

According to Jason LaCanfora of the Washington Post, people continue to question Giants general manager Joe Schoen’s decision to prioritize Jones’s contract over Barkley, even though the order in which the two players signed doesn’t have anything to do with the team’s current 1-2 record nor the offense’s struggles.

Notes LaCanfora in his report:

Numerous executives anticipated a weak market for Barkley and quarterback Daniel Jones; Barkley had no obvious suitors besides the Giants (who put a franchise tag on him), and the deal Jones got from New York, some execs said, far exceeded anything he would have landed had he been forced to actually test the market.

It's hard to say that no one would have come calling for Barkley’s services, considering his injury history and the declining value the league seems to be placing on running backs these days.

But the quarterback argument? Granted, Jones isn’t a top 15 signal caller—The Ringer has him ranked as the 19th best quarterback through the first three weeks of the season—but any argument about the Giants drafting a new quarterback considering how low in the draft order they were this past year made zero sense given the team’s other pressing needs.

With the Giants looking to build on their 9-7-1 record that led to their first playoff berth since 2016, what sense would it have made to start over with a new signal caller by risking Jones’s potential departure for a quarterback-starved team with a lot of cash burning a hole in its pocket?

Jones may never reach the level of Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes, but he proved that he is a quarterback a team can win with, which is better than what some teams can claim with their starting signal caller.

As for Barkley, he revealed in an interview with the Money Matters podcast airing before training camp what was long suspected: the Giants, and he didn’t see eye-to-eye on his potential overall value in the Giants’ offense.

Whereas Barkley might view himself as more of a Christian McCaffrey type capable of running the ball and serving as a receiver out of the backfield on more than just check-downs, the Giants felt otherwise.

Add to that Barkley’s injury history—and he’s again dealing with another lower-body injury—plus the fact that Schoen came from a Buffalo Bills organization that didn’t allocate big money to running backs, and it's not hard to see why the Giants took the steps they did.

LaCanfora quotes another unnamed NFL executive as believing “had the Giants not tagged Barkley, he would be back on a deal worth around $8 million per year, while if the Giants had placed a nonexclusive tag on Jones.”

What’s interesting about this opinion is the difference between the franchise tags for quarterbacks and running backs. Had the Giants had to tag Jones, that would have cost them three times as much as it would have cost them to tag Barkley.

That would have meant the Giants, who are continuing to get out from under the salary cap mess Schoen inherited from the Dave Gettleman era, wouldn’t have had much cap space to add to a roster that, while managing to go 9-7-1 the year prior, was deficient in numerous areas, particularly on the defensive side of the ball.

To be fair, Schoen did leave himself with an escape hatch with Jones if he doesn’t live up to expectations. Having restructured the contract already, Jones’s cap number over the next three years rises by $2.105 million, with his 2024 cap figure ($47.1 million) the fifth highest in the league.

But the Giants, who should be in much better shape next year with their cap, will be able to swallow that. If they cut Jones after 2024, this means the Giants will save $19.395 million while eating $22 million in dead money if he’s a pre-June 1 transaction.

That savings jumps to $30.5 million with $11.105 million in dead money for 2025 and 2026 if Jones is designated as a post-June 1 transaction.

But getting back to the original point of the piece, which is the Giants struggles, the issues they’ve had on offense extend way beyond the quarterback’s play and the running back’s absence, which is why this whole second-guessing of how the Giants approached the handling of both contracts is silly.

Get the latest breaking news and analysis on the New York Giants
Follow and like us on Facebook
Submit your questions for our mailbag
Check out the Giants Country YouTube Channel.
Subscribe and like the LockedOn Giants YouTube Channel
Connect with us via text alerts! Free 14 Day Trial!