New York Giants beat reporter Charlotte Carroll (The Athletic) spoke with team leader and star defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence at a charity event on November 19, and his words hinted that Daniel Jones’ benching didn’t sit well with parts of the NYG locker room.
“Teams lose games, not just one player, and I think that should be understood,” Lawrence said on Tuesday of Week 12. He also noted that while “you’ve got to respect” the quarterback change as a player, “you don’t [have to] like it.”
“Lawrence said the Giants’ decision, relayed to the team Monday morning, was received with ‘a little bit of confusion,’” Carroll reported within her article.
She also quoted the big man on the defense, who explained: “You don’t know their full thoughts behind it. I think we trust the coaches and where they’re going and where they think we can go. That’s what you have to do, you have to be naïve. You start thinking about the wrong [expletive], then you start playing like [expletive], you know what I’m saying? You got to be naïve and trust the process.”
Despite preaching a blind loyalty toward this regime, Lawrence also expressed that Jones is “the QB1” and “the best quarterback on the team.”
“They see things differently,” he added, seemingly referring to head coach Brian Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen. “I guess that’s all that matters.”
Giants Beat Reporter Says GM Joe Schoen Is ‘Not That Popular’ in NYG Locker Room
Benching Jones was the right decision by most accounts, but it could still have a negative impact on this team if the players aren’t united around the transition to Tommy DeVito. Going one step further, the benching could also create a scenario where Daboll and Schoen lose the trust of this locker room.
Following a disastrous 2023 campaign, the Giants players still graded Daboll favorably — displaying that they approved of him and the direction of the franchise. Is that still the case in November of 2024?
Speaking with the “Talkin’ Giants” podcast on November 19, ESPN NYG beat reporter Jordan Raanan revealed that Daboll’s right-hand man, Schoen, “is not that popular in the locker room at all.”
He said this after discussing the fallout of the recent Nick McCloud cut and last offseason’s Saquon Barkley departure.
“I’ve talked to plenty of guys in the locker room and those kinds of things bother them,” Raanan relayed.
Per the ESPN reporter, another situation that appeared to irk Giants players was when veteran quarterback Tyrod Taylor lost the starting job to DeVito after Jones’ 2023 injury. Taylor initially lost the role due to injury, but the Giants later chose to stick with DeVito once the former was healthy enough to return.
“If ‘Hard Knocks’ was true, they really thought Tyrod [Taylor] might come back [in free agency],” Raanan noted. “He wasn’t going to come back. He didn’t like that he lost his job by injury again and to Tommy DeVito.”
Raanan called this a massive “misevaluation” of the situation, and this is something that appears to be occurring right before our eyes again in Week 12 — as the Giants leapfrog Jones and Drew Lock for the younger DeVito.
In Raanan’s opinion, the “one thing” that could cost Daboll and Schoen their jobs at the end of the season is a fractured locker room. Furthermore, after Jones’ demotion, this regime could be standing on shaky ground.
Giants’ Dexter Lawrence Calls Daniel Jones His ‘Best Friend’ & Says He Has ‘Respect’ for Tommy DeVito
There were two more quotes from Carroll’s interview of Lawrence that carried weight. The first involved the star defensive tackle describing his relationship with Jones.
“That’s my best friend,” he said. “It’s tough for that [benching] to happen. I can’t control it. They made the decision based off their evaluations and their thoughts and feelings. … That’s my boy. As a player, you got to keep playing. As a human and as a brother, I feel for him.”
On the flip side, here is Lawrence talking about the Giants’ new starting QB, DeVito.
“I got a lot of respect for [DeVito],” Lawrence voiced. “He has probably the most charisma and confidence I’ve ever seen in a third-string quarterback. That’s good. I respect him for that. He knows who he is, and that’s strong as a person.”
Those are two very different quotes, and while every member of the Big Blue locker room might respect DeVito and his story, they don’t seem to believe in his ability — and it’s not the first time that there have been reports of this. That’s not a great sign as the team turns things over to the second-year prospect for the foreseeable future.
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