Drew Lock embracing role as Giants’ Daniel Jones insurance
Of course, he wants to play.
Drew Lock, like any other NFL quarterback, believes he should be a starter in the league.
But Lock, who signed a one-year contract in the offseason as the Giants newest backup to starter Daniel Jones, knows the ideal scenario to 2024.
“When Daniel plays well, that’s great for everyone here, including myself,” Lock told The Post after practice on Monday. “That means we’re a winning football team. So, when we win, he plays his ass off and we get to those last couple weeks and he doesn’t need to play, they throw me out there to play a little bit and we go to the playoffs.
“That’s the ideal position of a backup. You never want to play unless your team is locked up with a playoff position.”
This scenario, given Jones’ checkered injury history and the Giants calamity at the quarterback position in 2023, seems as likely as Lawrence Taylor coming out of retirement and challenging Kayvon Thibodeaux to a sack contest.
A lot went wrong for the Giants last season. The thing most responsible for the 6-11 end result was the team’s mess at quarterback.
Jones was lost for three games after suffering a neck injury in Week 5. It was his second neck injury in three seasons. Then, Jones failed to last a full game once returning from the neck injury when he was lost for the season with a torn ACL in Week 9 at Las Vegas.
Backup Tyrod Taylor showed some promise in Jones’ place while he was out with the neck injury before he was knocked out with a concussion in Week 8 against the Jets.
That left the Giants, when Jones injured his knee against the Raiders, having to turn to rookie free agent Tommy DeVito.
DeVito, a North Jersey native, carved out a nice story for himself, going 3-3 as a starter, but he never seemed to gain the full trust of head coach Brian Daboll as a truly dependable No. 2.
When Taylor signed a two-year deal with the Jets early in free agency, enter Lock, who began his career as a second-round pick with Denver, where he lasted three seasons before being traded to Seattle, where he spent the past two seasons.
Lock, the Giants hope, will provide a better safety net than they got last season in case Jones succumbs to another injury.
Lock had other options in free agency, but he was locked in on the Giants because he saw it as his best opportunity to get reps with the starters in spring OTAs since Jones wasn’t cleared to practice until training camp. He, too, knows the obvious: Jones’ injury history.
Asked to describe the narrative of his career, which has included 23 starts with a 9-14 record, Lock used the word “resilience,” citing the litany of “ups and downs” in his unsettled five NFL seasons.
Lock spoke about the Broncos firing his first offensive coordinator, Rich Scangarello, who was replaced by Pat Shurmur, ironically Jones’ head coach his rookie season.
Then, he referred to the Broncos bringing in Teddy Bridgewater to start in place of him in 2020. Then came the trade to Seattle where he had to “go through it again and be the backup there.”
Then “waiting for my chance to play, waiting a whole year (2022) without playing once,” he said, because that was the year of the Geno Smith career resurgence.
“He’s had some things early on in his career that he’s had to learn from and grow from,” Daboll said Monday. “He’s got some good experiences. He did a good job backing up Geno at Seattle. He’s mature, got some size and got enough athletic ability. We thought he’d be a good fit for us.”
Lock on Monday spoke with reverence about Jones, saying he would never have known he was coming off an ACL injury by watching him work in the weight room, calling his work ethic “through the roof.”
“First guy in and last guy out,” he went on. “Smart as can be. I pick his brain on everything and watch every single rep he takes. He’s what you want to be. This city saw that out of him when they made the playoffs [two seasons ago]. He’s dealt with new head coaches, new OCs, finally hitching his wagon to ‘Dabes’ and making the playoffs.”
The Giants can only hope that the quarterbacking scenario Lock laid out comes to fruition in 2024.
