The Giants have released quarterback Daniel Jones, ending an awkward episode that had Jones buried on the depth chart not due to skill but due to $23 million in injury guarantees for 2025.
There are still financial ramifications arising from the move.
First, his $35.5 million salary this year remains fully guaranteed. They’ll owe him $1.97 million per week for the rest of the regular season.
The Giants will be entitled to an offset for anything he earns elsewhere, unless he chooses to take the balance of the 2024 salary as termination pay. (He’ll first pass through waivers, and he will undoubtedly go unclaimed.)
Thus, they’ll save no cash or cap space for 2024. For 2025, they’ll owe him nothing. Based on the original signing bonus ($36 million) and the restructuring of his 2023 base salary (which dropped the number from $9.5 million to $1.08 million and prorated the balance), the Giants will carry $22.21 million in dead money for Jones in 2025.
It’s not clear what was in it for the Giants to cut Jones. At a minimum, they should have asked for a waiver of the ability to avoid offsets through the termination-pay provision.
Even then, the Giants have lost the ability to make him a post-June 1 release in March, which would have split the cap charge equally between 2025 and 2026 — $11.105 million each year.
