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.
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.
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.
Avoiding the injury guarantees by releasing him when he's healthy is mitigating the damage.
There's nothing you can do with the rest. Even if you had tried before the trade deadline, no one would take on any reworking of the contract Jones would have agreed to.