Giants general manager Joe Schoen spoke with reporters at his and Brian Daboll’s end-of-season press conference Monday morning, and strongly affirmed that his belief in Daniel Jones is the same as it was when he signed the quarterback to a four-year, $160 million deal nearly a year ago.
“Yes,” Schoen immediately said when asked the question about Jones, who missed time with a neck injury this season before tearing his ACL.
Jones has had injury concerns in the past, including with his neck, and took a step back on the field before his season-ending ACL injury. But Schoen says he still believes that the Giants can build a winning team around Jones as their starting quarterback.
“Yes. It's football, and guys get hurt,” Schoen said. “You can't always predict it. I think guys that have previous injuries, you gotta look at the injuries individually, what they were and how they were caused. I have a lot of faith in our training staff as well.
“Hopefully he’ll be back for Week 1. We don’t have a crystal ball here, but we’ll continue to build the team the way we see best.”
As for Saquon Barkley, Schoen said conversations about using the franchise tag on him will be had in the near future, but he wouldn’t hint which way they could go when it comes to the lifelong Giant.
“Saquon and I will talk about that. That's a tool that we have at our disposal,” Schoen said. “When we redid his deal before he came to camp, that wasn’t taken out of that deal. It wasn’t ‘Hey, we’ll do this, but no franchise tag,’ so that’s an option we have on the table.
“We’ll have those conversations. I’m not saying we will or we won’t, but we’ll have those conversations in the next month or so.”