Giants GM Joe Schoen said Monday that Daniel Jones is going to be with the team next season.
Schoen was asked if he believes Jones can help the Giants win a Super Bowl, and the GM seemingly let the truth slip.
“We’re happy Daniel’s gonna be here,” Schoen said. “We’re happy he’s gonna be here. Hopefully we can get something done with his representatives, and that would be the goal to build the team around him where he could lead us to win a Super Bowl.”
The GM clearly hadn’t entered the press conference intended to be that definitive, but it was too late to put the genie back in the bottle.
He holds a franchise tag (or transition tag) to retain Jones, 25, for one more season at minimum. And while the GM anticipates “time-consuming” negotiations with Jones’ agents, a possible multi-year contract extension clearly is in play.
“It takes two,” Schoen said. “Both sides gotta have those conversations. We haven’t crossed that bridge yet. There’s tools at our disposal. We’ll go through several scenarios.
“I mentioned it last year at the combine, ‘if-then’ scenarios, you gotta go through all of those,” Schoen added. “You don’t know how things are gonna fall, because it’s negotiating. This is why you love the draft. You turn in the card, they’re yours. You know what the contract structure is, you know the years.”
The tag is one of the “tools” Schoen can use to protect Jones as an asset while the Giants negotiate a longer term deal with his representatives.
The Giants can put either the transition or franchise tag on Jones between Feb. 21 and March 7 if they don’t have a long-term contract done. The tag can function as a placeholder as they continue to negotiate an extension, as well.
“This is where there’s two parties involved,” Schoen said. “It’s gonna be time-consuming. But we’ll get together as a staff, we’ll talk through the different options and have those discussions when it’s appropriate.”
The GM’s definitive statement that “Daniel’s gonna be here,” though, took any conjecture out of where this situation stands. It was much stronger than his characterization earlier in the presser that “we’d like Daniel to be here.”
Jones impressed the Giants and said he would “love to be back” on Sunday, after sounding non-committal postgame Saturday in Philadelphia.
Then Schoen said Monday that “Daniel played well this season” and laid out that the QB will return. The only question now is what the contract will look like or if he’ll play on the tag.
