With Daniel Jones making insane money, 2023 remains a massive year for Mac Jones

BOSTON -- Everyone in the football world knows that the 2023 season represents a significant fork in the road for Patriots quarterback Mac Jones. Succeed in a real offense coached by Bill O'Brien, and a long, sustainable NFL career awaits. Take a step backward for a second year in a row, and enter the life as an NFL scavenger.

It's high-stakes stuff for a 24-year-old playing the most pressure-packed position in all of sports, and that's just from the competitive standpoint.

Tuesday, though, provided a reminder of the financial implications that the upcoming season holds. Because not-all-that-good quarterback Daniel Jones was handed an absolutely baffling amount of money by the New York Giants.

Daniel Jones is now the proud owner of a contract that can be worth up to $195 million over four years but is guaranteed to pay him $82 million over the next two years. A year after Kyler Murray got a $230.5 million contract with more than $100 million in fully guaranteed money, the quarterback market remains ... broken.

Really, Jones' contract with the Giants might be the breaking point in this market. What began with Jimmy Garoppolo and Kirk Cousins getting record deals has ballooned into Daniel Jones getting 82 million real American dollars given to him by a professional football team. It's too much.

It's reminiscent, in a way, of the issues that teams had signing first-round draft picks, back in the days before the rookie wage scale. Sam Bradford got a $78 million deal with $50 million guaranteed before ever playing a snap in the NFL. JaMarcus Russell got a $61 million deal, roughly half of which was guaranteed. It was a lot, so owners dug in during the 2011 lockout and made sure to fix it.

Now, nobody's shedding tears for owners who have to pay tens of millions of dollars to their mediocre quarterbacks these days, and rightfully so. The owners can afford it 10 times over. That's the whole benefit of being a billionaire. However, if the quarterback salaries continue to grow to unchecked levels, it'll likely mean players at more "disposable" positions find it harder to get a larger piece of the pie. Ideally, there'd be a middle-class tier of quarterbacks that don't cost 40 million U.S. dollars per year, but that's just not the reality.

All of which brings us to the man of the hour, Mac Jones. 

Jones, as everybody knows, is coming off a no-good, terrible kind of year. Everybody also knows that Jones was tasked with running an offense that was designed and called by Matt Patricia, with a heavy dose of Joe Judge. It was an impossible task on its own, and the fact that the offensive line (also coached by Patricia) couldn't even protect him added an extra degree of difficulty, seemingly just for good measure.

Nevertheless, even with that ugly season, look at the side-by-side comparison of Mac Jones vs. Daniel Jones after the first two years of both players' careers.

As a passer, Mac Jones is a better quarterback in every possible way. As a runner, obviously Daniel Jones is the far superior player -- though he's not in the Justin Fields, Lamar Jackson tier of mobile quarterbacks. Nor is he a true dual-threat QB like Josh Allen or Jalen Hurts. Daniel Jones is just a very fast guy who would sooner tuck it away and run instead of going through his progressions and/or trying to fit a pass into a tight window.

Regardless, it should be crystal clear for Mac Jones that a good season in 2023 should guarantee him his fifth-year option, along with the hefty pay raise that comes with it.

Technically, Daniel Jones' career might actually prove that there isn't tremendous pressure on Mac Jones to perform in 2024, as Daniel Jones was very bad (10 TDs, 7 INTs, 84.8 rating) in his third year, thus leading to the Giants opting to not exercise the QB's fifth-year option.

But the corollary here is Joe Judge. After that third year, the Giants weren't sure about Daniel Jones, but John Mara knew enough to say this: "We've done everything possible to screw this kid up since he's been here."

A year later, after Jones threw for the 15th-most yards and the 21st-most touchdowns with the 24th-highest yards-per-attempt average, the Giants just gave the man his own personal bank.

Again, Mac Jones already knew what was on the table for him in 2023. But the rise of the unrelated Daniel Jones from subpar to mediocre in New York ended up making the quarterback a lifetime of riches. With Patricia and Judge out of the picture for Mac, the opportunity to become a secure, extremely wealthy NFL quarterback clearly lies ahead.