Seats around the NFL are always hot, and two head coaches already have been fired during the season. While there might be three or four truly untouchable coaches across the league, just about every other opportunity is one losing streak or change of heart away from disappearing. I don’t like to root for anybody to get fired, but Sunday was a day in which the warmest seats in football had their temperatures rise even higher.
Let’s break down those four performances, what went wrong and how they apply to each team’s seasonlong issues. I’m not going to give a recommendation on whether these coaches should or should not be fired, but now’s probably the time to start talking about whether these openings will become available between now and February.
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I’ll start in Chicago, where the grand opening of the Caleb Williams era a couple of months ago appears to have quickly led to a grand closing for Bears fans. What has gone wrong for the rookie No. 1 overall pick and his team?
Jump to a team:
Bears | Cowboys
Giants | Jaguars
Chicago Bears (4-5)
Week 10 result: Lost 19-3 to the Patriots
The coach: Matt Eberflus
Something is officially wrong in Chicago. The grumbling about Eberflus and the Bears after the dramatic Hail Mary loss to the Commanders last month felt like misplaced anger toward cornerback Tyrique Stevenson, who had chosen to go rogue at the worst possible time. (If Eberflus told Stevenson it was fine to spend the first few seconds of a play jawing with fans, I’m happy to issue a correction.) When the Bears struggled Nov. 3 in their 29-9 loss to the Cardinals, the concerns felt like leftover frustration from the Washington game.
Now, though, it’s becoming clear this isn’t the hangover from one bad moment. The Bears began a three-game homestand Sunday by being roundly outplayed by the Patriots, who held them to one field goal in a 19-3 defeat. The Bears failed to score a touchdown for the second straight game and went 1-for-14 on third down. A New England defense that had just eight sacks across its prior six games combined to bring down Williams nine times.
Bears fans are used to disappointing quarterbacks not getting the help they need, but this season was supposed to be different. Williams was a consensus No. 1 pick after two excellent seasons at USC. General manager Ryan Poles had surrounded him with what many called the best situation for a rookie quarterback in league history, with Keenan Allen, Rome Odunze and D’Andre Swift added to play alongside Cole Kmet and DJ Moore. When the Bears won three straight while scoring 95 points before their mid-October bye, it felt like Williams & Co. were in the process of breaking out. Instead, just about everything is going wrong.
Some of the names not included in that list are big problems for the Bears. One is offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, who doesn’t appear to be giving Williams the answers he needs. As an example, the Bears have essentially abandoned play-action over this three-game losing streak. Williams used play fakes on 19.5% of his dropbacks during their winning stretch, which ranked 19th in the league. Since the bye, that has dropped to 14.5%, which ranks last. Some of that might be game situation, but research suggests play-action is still effective, even if offenses haven’t gotten out to a lead and established the run. Williams had two play-action pass attempts Sunday.
The offense doesn’t look put together with any sort of steady vision or scope. Ideally, timing of the routes and progression would be in sync with the footwork of the quarterback, so there would be a natural rhythm to where and when Williams is throwing the ball. Coordinators wouldn’t want to tie a creative quarterback to getting the ball out the moment he hits the end of his dropback, but it’s not the worst thing in the world if he gives the quarterback answers as he gets there.
That just isn’t the case in Chicago. I saw plays Sunday in which Williams hit the end of his drop and there wasn’t anybody out of their break in position to look for the ball. The first two sacks came on plays where Williams was waiting in the pocket and nobody was even close to coming open.
That leads to a lot of Williams holding the ball and either waiting in the pocket or aimlessly scrambling until someone gets open. As New England defender Brenden Schooler noted, the Patriots found that Williams had already held the ball for six seconds or longer on 34 plays, which might qualify as a career’s worth for some veterans.
It’s fine for passers to hold the ball forever when they’re Patrick Mahomes or peak Russell Wilson, but when Williams holds the ball for even four seconds or more, he ranks 28th in QBR. All that scrambling makes it more difficult for a QB to reset his feet and deliver an accurate pass, an issue that has plagued Williams. He has thrown more than 23% of his passes off-target. The only other quarterback above 19% is Bryce Young. Some of that is pressure, but he also is throwing a league-worst 19.1% of his passes off-target without pressure.
Quarterbacks such as Josh Allen can destroy teams by extending plays and creating big completions out of structure. Williams did that at USC, so it’s an element of his game everyone was hoping would translate to the pros. So far, it hasn’t. When he has been outside the pocket, his 9.2 QBR ranks 30th. Only four other quarterbacks have thrown from outside the pocket more often, so this is a significant subset of his plays that are resulting in brutally bad efficiency.
There haven’t been big plays on offense in general. Just 4.2% of Chicago’s offensive snaps produce a gain of 20 or more yards, the fifth-worst rate in the league. The Bears didn’t seem to try to hit anything downfield on the Patriots. Williams had just one pass travel more than 15 yards downfield all game. When that is combined with an offense that converts third downs at the lowest rate of any team, I’m not sure how it’s possible to build an offense that gets results:
In the pocket, things are going only marginally better. The offensive line has probably taken too much of the blame for Williams’ struggles, but it would be tough to say it’s playing well. The Patriots were able to repeatedly pressure Williams with twists and stunts, and the Bears were slow to react and adjust in protection when coach Jerod Mayo brought unexpected pressure from the second level. Schooler, the Pats’ ace special-teamer, played his first defensive snaps of the season as a spy and came up with a sack and a pressure on five plays.
Injuries have hurt the Bears. Ten offensive linemen have already played at least 50 offensive snaps. As they got one expected starter back from injured reserve this week in Ryan Bates, they lost another when Teven Jenkins went down. They had to play backups Larry Borom and Matt Pryor at tackle. With all that being said, the only linemen who allowed more than one quick pressure during Sunday’s game was Jenkins’ replacement, Doug Kramer, who allowed four in 29 opportunities after filling in at guard.
The other problem, scarily enough for Bears fans, is that the receivers haven’t been as good as advertised. As recently as last season, Allen ranked in the top 10 in open score, ESPN’s measure of how effective a receiver is at getting himself open on a route-by-route basis, regardless of whether he is thrown the ball. This year, he has dropped from ninth to 87th by that metric. Odunze started the day by dropping a third-down pass from Williams, albeit one that was still likely to end up short of the sticks, another little thing this offense doesn’t master. Moore didn’t inspire any controversy, but Williams didn’t look his way when he looked to be open on two of those nine sacks.
The Patriots haven’t had a great defense this season, but they had absolutely no fear of lining up their guys and playing man-to-man coverage against Chicago’s top three wide receivers. They played man on 24 of Williams’ 39 dropbacks and limited him to 74 yards on 17 pass attempts. Seven of the Patriots’ nine sacks came with the defense playing man coverage. Teams were not supposed to be able to do that against this group of receivers.
Bears fans understandably want changes. That starts with Waldron, who wasn’t necessarily the most popular hire when he joined from the Seahawks in the offseason. While it didn’t directly cost the Bears the game, his decision to hand the ball to Kramer on a third-and-1 in the fourth quarter might be one of the most bizarre decisions I’ve seen a coordinator make in years. On Sunday, he dialed up a sprint-out for Williams out of empty to the weakside where it looked like nobody involved had practiced the play. It ended, unsurprisingly, in a sack.
A portion of the fan base wanted the organization to move on from Eberflus in the offseason, when the Bears could have used the opening and the ability to coach Williams to attract an offensive-minded coach. Eberflus’ success coaching up the defense during the second half of 2023 made that an unlikely proposition, while DeMeco Ryans’ tenure in Houston suggested that a defensive head coach could mix just fine with a rookie quarterback.
Firing Eberflus, now 14-29 as Chicago’s coach, might satisfy Bears fans who want changes, but I’d be concerned about emulating another long-suffering organization that set itself back. The Jets fired Robert Saleh in October after a rough start to the season. Saleh didn’t have a great record — and firing him during the offseason might have made sense — but getting rid of him during the season when the offense was struggling didn’t, given that New York couldn’t hire a meaningful alternative. Jets fans filled in the panic move by suggesting they were committing too many penalties and getting off to slow starts.
Saleh’s departure hasn’t solved those issues or fixed the offense. The Jets still commit too many penalties on both sides of the ball, and they’ve trailed in the first half of every game since his departure, including Sunday’s game against the Cardinals, where they allowed three straight touchdown drives to begin the game. The decisions to swap coordinator Nathaniel Hackett for Todd Downing and trade for wideout Davante Adams, more logical fits to improve the offense, also haven’t done much.
Instead, Saleh’s firing (and the promotion of defensive playcaller Jeff Ulbrich to interim coach) has served only to destabilize the defense. The Jets ranked sixth in expected points added (EPA) per play on defense before Saleh’s firing. They are last by that same metric since his departure. Kyler Murray and the Cardinals lit up the Jets, but Russell Wilson and Jacoby Brissett also pulled out victories against what was supposed to be a feared defense. Firing Saleh when they did made no sense for the Jets.
For whatever limitations Eberflus might have as a coach, the Bears rank third in EPA per play on defense. I would be nervous that firing Eberflus now, when a new coach won’t have any sort of spring or summer break to install his offense and any coach under contract won’t leave his team in midseason, wouldn’t accomplish anything positive and run the risk of sinking the Bears’ defense the same way that it did the Jets. There might be a time when it makes sense to move on Eberflus, but that’s probably during the offseason.
Jacksonville Jaguars (2-8)
Week 10 result: Lost 12-7 to the Vikings
The coach: Doug Pederson
Unlike the other teams on this list, the Jaguars actually led for most of the game Sunday, courtesy of an early touchdown drive and three red zone interceptions of Sam Darnold. While the Jacksonville defense was able to quiet Justin Jefferson and keep Minnesota from scoring an offensive touchdown, the Mac Jones-led offense did nothing after the first quarter to extend that lead. No team had lost a game in which it allowed zero offensive touchdowns and forced three interceptions since 2000, with teams going 93-0 between 2021 and 2024 before Sunday.
How did that happen? Across the final 45 minutes, the Jaguars produced 62 net yards on offense. That’s the seventh-fewest number produced by any team in the final three quarters over the past decade. The gold standard for bad offensive performances over that time frame is the 2020 COVID-era game when wide receiver Kendall Hinton had to start at quarterback for Denver. Hinton and the Broncos had 24 more yards of offense in the final three quarters of their blowout loss to the Saints than Jones and the Jags did in Week 10.
There’s a reasonable case to be made that this was the worst performance of the Pederson era, too. The Jaguars managed only 145 net yards, which is the fewest a Pederson-led team has produced in a game by more than 50 yards. And while some of that might be pinned on Jones being in the lineup for injured starter Trevor Lawrence, the Jaguars produced just 215 net yards in last week’s loss to the Eagles. That game, with Lawrence on the field, ranked 122nd out of 124 Pederson-led offensive performances by net yards.
By EPA, at minus-0.27 points per snap, this was merely tied with an ugly loss to the Cowboys for the fifth-worst performance from a Pederson-led offense in Jacksonville or Philadelphia. It was the first time in his tenure as a head coach that his offense failed to amass at least 12 first downs in a game, as Jacksonville managed 10 in four quarters.
There was a time in which Jones and Pederson wouldn’t have seemed like the worst fit. During Jones’ time at Alabama, he excelled on RPOs, completing more than 90% of his throws while averaging more than 10 yards per attempt. NFL teams can’t build an entire offense out of RPOs, but Pederson was comfortable using them during his time in Philadelphia, especially when Nick Foles was under center.
On Sunday, Jones was pretty reasonable when the Jaguars and playcaller Press Taylor gave him quick solutions, as the former Patriots starter went 5-of-6 for 48 yards when he got rid of the ball in less than 2.5 seconds. Anything longer was essentially a disaster, as he was otherwise 9-of-16 for 63 yards with two picks. He didn’t look confident as a dropback passer.
Maybe the RPOs weren’t a great fit. What about getting Jones involved in the play-action game, a common way for coaches to make life easier for quarterbacks? Early in the first quarter, the Jags hit a big play when they booted Jones off a play-fake and had him throw quickly to tight end Brenton Strange, who broke a tackle and went for 23 yards. Hitting the tight end on a bootleg isn’t always going to result in an explosive play, but this seems like an obvious concept to try to hit again as the game went on.
Instead, the Jags ran one snap of play-action from under center the rest of the game, and Jones didn’t even boot out of the pocket off it. He had one other snap with play-action, per NFL Next Gen Stats. I’d forgive the Jags if the concepts they were otherwise using were working, but with all their struggles, why not bring back or play off one of the things that worked during the only successful drive of the game?
The coaches weren’t the only ones to blame. The execution wasn’t great, either. Jones missed a speed out the Jags were clearly hoping to use as a response to Minnesota’s aggressive blitz packages. The team’s running backs had an appalling game in pass protection, something that unfortunately isn’t new and led to multiple sacks. When they dialed up an early screen, the team’s offensive linemen were late to get to their landmarks, which caused guard Brandon Scherff to go illegally downfield and the play to be blown up for a 1-yard loss.
That indiscipline permeates the roster. Last week, Jacksonville appeared to bench cornerback Montaric Brown after he was unable to force Saquon Barkley back to the help defenders on a third-and-17 draw the Eagles’ star took the house. Andre Cisco was flagged for unnecessary roughness when he dove at Eagles lineman Fred Johnson‘s legs as Jalen Hurts was about to walk into the end zone, a dirty hit that led the league to fine Cisco $11,817.
This week, it was Travon Walker getting flagged for unnecessary roughness as the Jags stopped the Vikings on third down with 1:04 to go, allowing Minnesota to kneel out the remainder of the game. While the game was already all but lost even before the flag, those sorts of penalties as teams are about to score on or beat the Jaguars look embarrassing.
Had this been just one game without the team’s franchise quarterback in a successful season, it wouldn’t be much cause for concern. Given how bad this offense has looked even with Lawrence, though, Pederson and Taylor can’t really lean on Jones as the problem. Lawrence isn’t an entirely innocent party when it comes to the issues with this offense, but Sunday was a reminder that things could be even worse without the 2021 No. 1 pick on the field.
Between the second half of 2022 and the first half of 2023, the Jaguars went 14-4 and outscored teams by four points per game. Since that fateful loss to the Bengals on “Monday Night Football” last December — when a win would have put them in position to claim the top seed in the AFC — the Jags have gone 3-13 and been outscored by 5.3 points per contest. This with a team ownership said was the “best Jaguars team ever assembled” before the season. Instead, these Jags have the same record the Urban Meyer Jags did through 10 games and a game on the road against the Lions on the way next week.
Dallas Cowboys (3-6)
Week 10 result: Lost 34-6 to the Eagles
The coach: Mike McCarthy
I’m not sure quarterback Cooper Rush going 13-of-23 for 45 yards told us a lot about the Cowboys or McCarthy’s future, but it sure wasn’t pretty. To again consider a coach’s whole career in context, going back through 2007, the minus-0.50 EPA per play mark the Cowboys posted in this game was the worst performance by any McCarthy-coached team. The prior record-holder was a Green Bay loss to the Lions on Thanksgiving in 2013 when Matt Flynn started at quarterback and the run game produced 24 yards on 15 carries. This performance by Dallas was the worst EPA per play rate for any offense in any game this season.
For some, the takeaway might have been CeeDee Lamb missing a would-be touchdown pass from 3 yards out by losing it in the sun, which chose a conspicuous time to shine through the roof in Arlington, Texas. After the game, Lamb agreed that the Cowboys should consider hanging curtains to block the sunlight, something team owner Jerry Jones insisted would require tearing down the stadium. Jones insisted the sun impacts both teams, and given that he said the Cowboys couldn’t afford running back Derrick Henry this offseason, perhaps he feels like solar power might be a low-cost aid to his struggling pass defense.
Instead, I’d argue that the sequence that defined this game involved running back Ezekiel Elliott. Rico Dowdle took most of the snaps on offense early and had nine carries for 52 yards, including a 19-yarder and a 5-yard gain to help push the Cowboys into the red zone. (If a 5-yard gain doesn’t sound like a big deal, consider that the average Dallas snap outside of those two plays gained 2.3 yards.) After a Lamb catch set up first-and-goal, they seemed to set to cash in for an early score that would have given them an unlikely 10-7 lead.
Enter Elliott, who came onto the field for the third-down catch by Lamb and stayed on for first-and-goal. After being benched for the prior game, the Cowboys welcomed him back by giving him a first-and-goal carry. Elliott responded by fumbling into the end zone and the Eagles recovered.
That was bad. What happened next was worse. The Eagles promptly gave the ball back to the Cowboys on a Jalen Hurts strip-sack, setting up Dallas on Philadelphia’s 6-yard line. Given an opportunity to atone for their mistake, the Cowboys … immediately handed the football to Elliott. He gained 3 yards. Dowdle eventually got a carry on third down and was stuffed, leading the Cowboys to kick a field goal.
This isn’t an argument to punish players for making mistakes or to suggest Dowdle is some superstar the Cowboys are holding back. It’s an argument to live in 2024. They are 3-6 and $60 million quarterback Dak Prescott is probably out for the season. Elliott is averaging 3.1 yards per carry and has a 35% success rate. He has even allowed five pressures in 20 pass-blocking opportunities. His presence on the roster is strictly for name-brand recognition. It’s better to have someone you know than someone who might actually be able to do the job well right now.
That’s true, unfortunately, of too many spots in this organization. The team’s other major offseason addition, linebacker Eric Kendricks, was out in space against Saquon Barkley early in this game and wasn’t quick enough to react before the Eagles’ star blew by. Quarterback Trey Lance came in and almost immediately threw an interception. Defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer has had no answers as teams have bypassed his once state-of-the-art blitz packages. And McCarthy, the team’s veteran coach, couldn’t build a competitive game plan around Rush, who won four of his five starts under the veteran coach in 2022.
The difference between that team and this one, as I mentioned last week in my Cowboys discussion, is that the offensive line is broken. Lance and Rush were pressured on more than 40% of their dropbacks and went 5-of-10 for 24 yards with a pick when the pressure got home. And without anybody in the offense to scare them besides Lamb, the Eagles didn’t have to worry about receivers creating after the catch or in space. The two quarterbacks were 12-of-13 on throws under 2.5 seconds, but those 12 completions went for a total of only 40 yards. When they held the ball, Lance and Rush were 5-of-16 for 26 yards.
This entire season feels like a scam, an attempt by the Cowboys to fool fans into believing that what they’re seeing is a team with a real shot at being competitive in the NFC. They’ve never really been close. Two of Dallas’ three wins are over the Giants and Browns. Their third is over the Steelers, but even that saw a leaping Dowdle lose a fumble at the 1-yard line on the final sequence of the game before Prescott recovered it and threw a fourth-down touchdown pass to Jalen Tolbert to win.
That’s the vicious cycle. The Cowboys didn’t invest appropriately at running back this offseason, which left Dowdle as their top choice. Dowdle fumbling at the 1-yard line discouraged McCarthy from giving him the ball and led him to turn to Elliott, who has no ceiling at this point and still managed to lose a fumble. Now, McCarthy might be hesitant to run the ball near the goal line, which won’t help the offense in the rare cases it actually makes it near paydirt.
For whatever perception he has had in the past, Jones was actually remarkably patient in giving Jason Garrett a decade as coach without ever making it as far as the NFC Championship Game. It’s unclear whether he intends to offer McCarthy the same sort of long leash — McCarthy is 45-31 in four-plus seasons — but unless Jones plans to trade edge rusher Micah Parsons, there aren’t many changes the Cowboys can make to the core of this team. It would hardly be a surprise if Zimmer was one-and-done here, as Mike Nolan was in 2020, but McCarthy’s status seems more up in the air. Is what happened with Prescott before the injury enough to seal his fate? Or could McCarthy’s future be determined by whether he can coax competent play out of Rush?
New York Giants (2-8)
Week 10 result: Lost 20-17 to the Panthers
The coach: Brian Daboll
On a day in which Daniel Jones ended two trips to the red zone with interceptions, I thought the moment that might end his run as the Giants’ starting quarterback came on a play in which he didn’t throw the ball at all. Facing a third-and-1 on his own 49-yard line in the second quarter, Daboll chose to dial up a flea-flicker. Given that the Giants were in a situation where they would be comfortable going for it on fourth down after an incompletion, it’s easy to understand why Daboll was willing to call something to try to generate an open receiver downfield for a big play.
It actually ended up getting two receivers open. Jones just didn’t throw the ball to either of them:
Jones instead took a sack that forced the Giants to punt. When he threw an interception on the next drive before halftime, I assumed we would be seeing Drew Lock after the break. At that point, Jones was running a minus-11.1% completion percentage over expected (CPOE) against what has arguably been the league’s worst pass defense. And that doesn’t even include the non-throw on the flea-flicker, which should have been a massive gain.
Instead, Jones was back on the field after the half. He played better and led a touchdown drive. After a Chuba Hubbard fumble gave the Giants a short field, Daboll’s team handed it right back with an interception on a poorly placed checkdown. A Jones two-minute drill set up a score-tying field goal, but after Tyrone Tracy fumbled on the first snap of overtime, the Panthers kicked a field goal to push the Giants to loss No. 8.
Another reason why Daboll fired up a flea-flicker in that situation is the reality that he has been forced to confront with Jones since taking over as New York coach. Unless it’s deliberately schemed up, Jones doesn’t throw deep. In 2022, that seemed like a virtue, with a quick passing game and the lowest average air yards per throw in the league. It was designed to get the ball out of his hands and avoid the sacks and fumbles that plagued him earlier in his career.
Since the start of 2023, though, Jones has 11 deep completions (traveling 20 or more air yards) in 16 starts. While he missed time with a torn ACL, consider that other quarterbacks have exceeded those numbers in limited time. Bo Nix didn’t start playing professional football until 2024, barely threw deep the first month, and he has 12. Nick Mullens, who had three starts for the Vikings last season, has 13. Aaron Rodgers sat out almost all of 2023 and has 14. Even Tyrod Taylor, who started five games in a Malik Nabers-less offense for the Giants last season, has as many deep completions as Jones on about one-third of the overall pass attempts.
When passers don’t hit big plays downfield very often, they need to sustain the offense by staying on schedule and converting for first downs. NFL Next Gen Stats tracks a version of success rate for dropbacks that measures how often quarterbacks improve their offense’s expected points from snap to snap. In 2022, Jones’ success rate was 47.9%, which was a respectable 13th in the league. This season, it’s 40.6%, which ranks 27th.
Jones was able to supplement that by scrambling, but he hasn’t been as active since 2022. In that playoff season, he averaged 25.1 rushing yards and 1.7 first downs on scrambles per game. That’s down to 8.6 rushing yards on scrambles per game this season, with Jones generating three first downs in nine games. Daboll has called his number instead on designed runs, which are less explosive and more likely to produce the sort of hits that cause injuries.
The other factor that helped the offense survive in 2022 and 2023 was a lack of giveaways. Jones ran a career-low 1.1% interception rate in 2022, and while that jumped to 3.8% in his six-start 2023 season, backups Taylor and Tommy DeVito were much better at protecting the football. The Giants had a league-low 7.3% of their drives result in giveaways in 2022, and that jumped to only 8.5% in 2023, which was sixth-best in football.
The Giants are 24th by that same metric this season, with more than 12% of their drives ending in turnovers. Last season’s Giants were lucky to recover nearly 71% of their fumbles on offense. They’ve recovered only 53% of those fumbles on offense this season, with what happened in overtime as the most obvious example of how fumble recoveries can help decide games.
The common defense of Jones has been that he hasn’t had enough help on offense, that he has been stuck with porous offensive lines and middling receivers for most of his career. There has certainly been at least some truth to those debates. The problem since he got his four-year, $160 million contract, though, is he hasn’t been as good as the players who have filled in for him.
Since the start of 2023, the Giants have averaged 1.23 points per drive in the games started by Jones. When Taylor or Tommy DeVito have started, though, they have averaged 1.32 points per possession. They’ve averaged more offensive points per game in Taylor and DeVito starts (16.1) than his starts (13.2). Taylor and DeVito spent last season with Saquon Barkley, but they didn’t have Nabers or Tracy, who had been excellent as a rookie before his fumble Sunday in Germany.
What’s left is a passing attack that doesn’t do any of the things needed to sustain a modern offense. Everyone wants to steadily move the chains and hit a ton of deep shots, but not everyone can be Lamar Jackson and the Ravens. Quarterbacks can hit a ton of big plays and be inefficient, like the Texans and C.J. Stroud. They can hit virtually no big plays and just rack up first downs, like the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes. They can avoid negative plays and move the ball by hitting every open receiver, like Josh Allen does for the Bills. But they have to do one of those things. Jones isn’t doing any of those well enough for the offense to thrive.
The Giants can wait to see if Jones turns things around, but there’s a $23 million problem hanging over their heads for 2025. There’s no money guaranteed for skill remaining on his deal after this season, but $23 million of his $30 million base salary in 2025 is guaranteed for injury, meaning Jones would receive that money if he got injured and was unable to pass a physical. For a player with serious knee and neck injuries in his past and who will play the rest of the season without his best offensive lineman in Andrew Thomas, the Giants have to realistically consider whether waiting to see if he can salvage a 2-8 season is worth the risk of being stuck with a huge bill for a quarterback they’re not going to want to keep after the season.
With playoff odds below 1%, there’s little reason for the Giants to keep Jones in the lineup. History tells us Lock probably won’t solve many of the problems with this offense, but he has been willing to throw the ball downfield and won’t cost $23 million next year. From Daboll’s perspective, it also gives the coach a chance to prove that he can work with another quarterback. Daboll, who is 17-26-1 as New York’s coach, inherited Jones from the prior regime; the former Bills coordinator would surely like a chance to pick the quarterback he gets to work with in 2025.