The Giants used this past offseason to make their priorities crystal clear. When it comes to the offense, they felt it was more important to lock quarterback Daniel Jones down to a multi-year extension instead of running back Saquon Barkley. But that doesn’t mean Danny Dimes has a lot of believers heading into 2023.
We’ve heard that many times, most recently from ESPN analyst and former NFL head coach, Herm Edwards. You can add former NFL running back, LeSean McCoy, to that list. When having a discussion on FS 1’s show, Speak, about who is more valuable to the Giants, Shady went all-in on Saquon:
“Daniel Jones’ isn’t even a condo. He’s like a garage.”@CutOnDime25 breaks down why Saquon is clearly more valuable than Daniel Jones to the Giants pic.twitter.com/7rya0DBSxQ
— Speak (@SpeakOnFS1) July 18, 2023
I mean, this isn’t shocking, right? After all, McCoy is a former running back. He wants to see running backs get paid in the NFL, and the opposite is happening right now. Plus, he spent six years playing against the Giants as a member of the Philadelphia Eagles. Did you really think he’d say Jones is more valuable to Big Blue than Barkley?
If you’d rather not take the two minutes out of your day to watch that clip, McCoy essentially said Jones only had a good year in 2022 because of head coach Brian Daboll (who he also played for). Is there truth to that? Well, yes — probably. But after failing Daniel Jones year after year to start his NFL career, New York finally put a coach in place that helped him unlock the talent already in there.
McCoy also said Jones has a ceiling, and we haven’t seen Saquon’s yet. I hope that’s the case for Barkley because that’ll be great for the Giants whenever he decides to play on the franchise tag this year. But then again, it’s not like Jones is a 30-something signal-caller who finally had a good year. He’s only 26 years old, and clearly, the Giants think he can continue growing into a better quarterback.
The final major point he made was the fact that Tyrod Taylor is the Giants’ backup quarterback. Since New York ran the ball with Jones a lot last year, he essentially said Taylor could do what Jones did in 2022.
That’s a whole lotta hot takes for the middle of July. I suppose we’ll see how things play out over the next few months. After all, the only way these things can get settled is by seeing what happens on the field.
You can reach Matt Musico at matt.musico@xlmedia.com. You can follow him on Twitter: @mmusico8.
