EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The wait goes on. It’s Aaron Rodgers’ world and the New York Giants are just one of the teams now living in his orbit.
The Giants and Pittsburgh Steelers are at an impasse when it comes to quarterback. They have standing offers out to Rodgers and are waiting for a response. In the meantime, the Steelers signed Mason Rudolph to be a backup, and the Giants had Jameis Winston visit on Tuesday. Russell Wilson and Joe Flacco were in their facility last week.
Rodgers appears to be in no rush to make a decision and apparently has interest in the Minnesota Vikings. Will they enter the fray? That option could change the future Hall of Famer’s decision.
So the Giants wait — until who knows when.
The 2025 NFL draft is April 24-26. Some clarity should come by then. The draft will ultimately usher in the Giants’ biggest long-term quarterback decision in recent years. Do they draft a quarterback at No. 3, or by trading back into the first round or early in the second? It’s the only way to fulfill their top long-term priority.
“That’s obviously the No. 1 issue for us going into this offseason is to find our quarterback of the future, whether that be via the draft or acquire a veteran,” owner John Mara said after the season. “It’s going to be up to [general manager Joe Schoen and coach Brian Daboll] to decide.”
Rodgers or any of these other veterans are merely stopgaps for the Giants in 2025. They tried on Matthew Stafford. He elected to stay with the Los Angeles Rams. Now they’re on to Rodgers. He’s Plan B or C depending on how they view the consensus top quarterback in the draft, Cam Ward.
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It’s actually bizarro world that this is where the Giants stand. They are waiting on Rodgers, with their fallback being a Winston, Wilson or Flacco. All are past their prime. This would all make more sense if it was 2015, not 2025.
But it’s not. This is the current plight of quarterback-needy teams in today’s NFL. They’re waiting desperately for a 41-year-old Aaron Rodgers to make a decision.
The reason the Giants wait is they believe that Rodgers is the best current option to win games this year. That matters to a general manager and coach who are under pressure to produce results fresh off a 3-14 campaign. Ownership expects to feel better after this upcoming season.
“We’re going to look for the best player available that can help us win games in ’25,” Schoen said last month at the NFL scouting combine. “That’s what we’re going to do.”
All roads currently lead to Rodgers for that proposition. The problem for the Giants is that they don’t appear to be the three-time MVP’s top choice. If they were, Rodgers would likely be signed already.
Rodgers’ priority is that he “wants to win,” a source with one of the teams in on Rodgers this offseason said. He’s eying a well-run organization that puts him in a position to succeed. That is understandable, having come from the Jets, where things went awry this past season. They fired coach Robert Saleh after five games, and it only got worse after that.
The Giants, meanwhile, are hardly a model of stability. They have just one winning season in the past eight years and are 11-30-1 in their past 42 regular-season games under Schoen and Daboll. They face an uphill climb to land Rodgers, given his prerequisites.
So if not Rodgers, what do the other veteran QB options give the Giants?
Russell Wilson
The thing with Wilson is that he appears to want to sign with the Giants. He was interested in landing in New York at the start of this offseason, a source told ESPN. He is also believed to have initiated a meeting with the team before he signed with the Steelers last season. But Wilson is 36, with his better days behind him. He was 22nd in the NFL with a QBR of 51.3 (which was actually better than Rodgers’ 48.0) and finished with 16 touchdown passes with five interceptions. Wilson’s ability to throw the deep ball to the Giants’ speedy wide receiving crew is enticing, but is he the right mentor for a young quarterback? He’s a Super Bowl winner and knows what it takes to be successful in the NFL. He’s also never been the most popular among his teammates and is about to be on his fourth team in five years.
Joe Flacco
Another option who is a Super Bowl winner. Again, that was more than a decade ago as well. Flacco, who played last season for the Colts after a year with the Browns and three with the Jets, is a borderline starter at this point. He has started fewer than 10 games each of the past six seasons. But Flacco also knows what it takes to be a high-level starter in the NFL and might actually make the best mentor of this bunch. At 40, he’s also probably the least mobile, which could be problematic behind this offensive line.
Jameis Winston
Winston is the wild card of the bunch. The youngest at 31, he also made it clear at the Super Bowl that he would be interested in coming to the Giants. But Winston is the least accomplished of the group and hasn’t experienced much success. He has a 36-51 career record, and the untimely interceptions are as much a part of his game as the spectacular tight-window throws. He’s well liked in the locker room, but does this give the Giants the best chance to win games in ’25 and provide the best mentor for a young quarterback?
