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Joe Schoen promised to “keep swinging” at quarterbacks this offseason, and the New York Giants general manager sure has been true to his word. He tried to trade for Matthew Stafford (and pay him $100 million). He spent two weeks waiting by his phone for Aaron Rodgers. Then he gave up and signed the enigmatic Jameis Winston, only to sign Russell Wilson just four days later.
There’s no doubt he has built a better quarterback room than what the Giants have had the last two seasons, but that’s only because the bar was really, really low. For a franchise in crisis, coming off a 3-14 season and double-digit losses in nine of the last 11 years, the Giants need more than just a couple of stop-gap veterans. They need someone who gives hope to their future.
“Obviously the No. 1 issue for us going into this offseason,” Giants co-owner John Mara said back in January, “is to find our quarterback of the future.”
But they don’t have one yet, and the odds are increasing that they might not find one this year. And until they do, they are stuck in quarterback purgatory — only one floor up from their previous home in quarterback hell.
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They were doomed to that fate, really, the minute Mara decided to bring back Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll for the 2025 season while simultaneously lighting a roaring fire under their seats. He didn’t call next season a “must-win” for either man, but he implied it when he answered a question about their hot seats by saying that “I’m going to have to be in a better mood this time next year than I am right now.”
It was at that moment when two goals conflicted. The Giants needed to be set up for a better future, but Schoen and Daboll needed a better present to insure they had a future at all. It left them placing one foot in both worlds, but not fully committed to either one.
And that’s exactly where they are. They signed a 36-year-old in Wilson who could help them get a few more wins this season, but whose “future” is in his past. And while maybe the 31-year-old Winston is young enough to have more of a future with the Giants, if they truly believed that they wouldn’t have signed Wilson, relegating Winston to the bench.
That duo is still a far better option than the disasters the Giants avoided when they threw their first two darts of the offseason at Stafford and Rodgers. They were willing to mortgage part of their future in terms of draft picks and cap space for the 37-year-old Stafford. And then they were willing to waste a year on the 41-year-old Rodgers, costing them millions more plus the costs of his inevitable demands.
They should be relieved their future assets were saved when they were forced to move on to Plan C.
But that plan has to include a quarterback taken relatively high in the draft for it to work. And that’s where things get really dicey for the Giants. They have grown convinced, according to a league source, that they won’t be able to trade up for Miami’s Cam Ward, the likely No. 1 pick by the Tennessee Titans. They also seem convinced that the Browns will take Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders at No. 2, though some sources think the Giants might pass on him anyway.
Schoen, in fact, sounded like he was preparing to not take a quarterback with the third overall pick, when he spoke to reporters on Monday at the NFL owners meetings in Palm Beach, Fla. He said the additions of Wilson and Winston will allow the Giants to “go any which direction in the draft. It doesn’t force you into a corner or force you to have to take something based on need.”
He’s right that they shouldn’t force themselves to pick a quarterback they don’t love. And to be fair to Schoen, this might really be a bad year to need a new quarterback. There are a lot of scouts down on this class, especially after Ward. One recently told FOX Sports that Ward “might be the only one who would’ve ranked in the top 5 of last year’s class.”
So, honestly, if the Giants ended up with Penn State edge rusher Abdul Carter or Colorado’s two-way star Travis Hunter at No. 3 and a quarterback on Day 2 (Ole Miss’ Jaxson Dart, Alabama’s Jalen Milroe or maybe Syracuse’s Kyle McCord) it’s hardly a total loss.
But it’s not a guaranteed win either. First-round quarterbacks historically aren’t even a 50-50 proposition. They are more likely to become busts than heroes of a franchise. But the odds of success drop precipitously in the later rounds. Maybe they’ll luck out and they’ll get Sanders, or whomever they draft on Day 2 will turn out to be the next Russell Wilson or Jalen Hurts. But again, the odds aren’t great.
They have to draft one, though, and it can’t just be a flier they take in the seventh round. That’s not how to address what their boss called “the No. 1 issue” of the offseason. But once they do address it, then what? They’ll have two veteran quarterbacks in front of their quarterback of the future on the depth chart, meaning he’s unlikely to get the kind of practice snaps he needs to develop. And even if he does, he’s not likely to play at all this year.
Wilson and Winston are low-cost additions, at least. Wilson got $10.5 million for one year with incentives that could double that. Winston got two years, $8 million, with presumably not much guaranteed. So if the Giants do end up thinking their rookie is ready for more, they could conceivably cut or trade one of them and the cost wouldn’t be high.
But unless that rookie is clearly the second coming of Jayden Daniels, an embattled coach and GM aren’t going to be quick to insert him into the lineup. Don’t ever forget that they need to improve Mara’s “mood,” which almost certainly means they need to win this year if they want to stick around. That’s going to be a big part of every decision they make this year.
And they will likely win more than last year, but to what end? While the rookie quarterback is rotting on the bench, the Wilson-Winston tandem isn’t likely to do much more than help the Giants grow from awful to mediocre in the short-term. That’s not nothing for a franchise that could only dream of mediocrity over the last 11 years. And it’s certainly not nothing for Schoen and Daboll.
But it still doesn’t help the long-term goal — finding that franchise quarterback that every true contender has. The Giants missed their opportunity last year in a stacked quarterback draft, when they couldn’t trade up for Daniels or Drake Maye, and decided to pass on Michael Penix Jr., Bo Nix and J.J. McCarthy. And they blew their shot at Ward when a Week 17 win over the Indianapolis Colts cost them the first pick in this year’s draft.
It does them no good to cling to the hopes of a better quarterback class in 2026 either, because every win in a mediocre season takes them farther away from getting a piece of that.
Which leaves them where they are, in a self-created purgatory. They could still come out of it OK. Maybe Wilson plays so well he’s worth keeping around for a few seasons. Maybe they end up with Sanders in the draft and he proves to be the star some think he can be. Or maybe they strike gold on Day 2 and they have a quarterback who comes out firing after a year in limbo.
That’s all a lot to hope for, but it’s all they really have. They’re really just killing time as they await the discovery of their franchise savior.
Until they find him, they are just stuck, straddling a fence, wondering which way they’re going to inevitably fall.
Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He spent the previous six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.
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