Recently, the New York Giants benched quarterback Daniel Jones in favor of backup Tommy DeVito in a decision that many have anticipated head coach Brian Daboll would make for weeks now. Jones has struggled mightily so far during the 2024-25 NFL season, and the Giants as a whole haven’t been much better, currently sitting at 2-8 ten games in.
With DeVito now as the starter, it seems that Drew Lock is now the team’s first backup, having been signed away from the Seattle Seahawks in free agency this year.
With that being the case, the team is now finding unique ways to make Jones useful at practice, per Dan Duggan of The Athletic.
“Daniel Jones spent part of the open portion of practice wearing a red scout team jersey lined up at safety during an offensive install period,” reported Duggan. “He was joined on the scout team D by some practice squad OL, TE coach Tim Kelly, assistant QB coach Christian Jones and offensive assistant Christian Daboll.”
Having Daniel Jones take defensive reps in practice was likely not how Giants fans envisioned this 2024-25 season materializing, even if their expectations weren’t necessarily sky high for the campaign.
A rough season for the Giants
It wasn’t all that long ago that the Giants profiled as one of the NFL’s exciting up and coming teams and Daboll as one of its brightest young coaches. In the 2022-23 season, the Giants raised eyebrows across the league by not only making the playoffs but also winning a game once they got there, knocking off the Minnesota Vikings on the road before bowing out to the Philadelphia Eagles in the following round.
However, that good fortune has run out quickly for New York in the last two seasons. Immediately after their playoff appearance, the Giants rewarded Daniel Jones with a lucrative contract extension which quickly turned into one of the worst decisions in the NFL, with Jones struggling mightily last year before ultimately going down with an ACL injury.
At that time, DeVito briefly captured the imagination of the football watching world with his colorful cast of family members and opportunistic play on the field, but the Giants quickly fell back down to earth and missed out on the playoffs by a wide margin.
DeVito will get his first start of the new season on Sunday vs the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at home. That game kicks off at 1:00 PM ET.
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