Sports
The Daniel Jones era is over. Giants bench QB who could never find his footing in New York
Daniel Jones took off with nothing but open field in front of him during a 2020 game against the Philadelphia Eagles. The deceptive speed that has made the New York Giants quarterback an effective runner allowed him to increase the distance from pursuing defenders. Then, as Jones neared the goal line for an 88-yard touchdown, he inexplicably stumbled.
With a national audience watching on “Thursday Night Football”, Jones started to lose his footing at Philadelphia’s 30-yard line. He tumbled to the ground and was tackled by an Eagles defender at the 8-yard line, to the disbelief of everyone watching.
With Jones’ benching signaling the end of his six-year run as the Giants’ starting quarterback, that play perfectly encapsulated his tenure. A flicker of promise but, ultimately, a disappointing result.
DANIEL JONES. 80-YARD RUN.
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📱: https://t.co/W5bCPYgMfo pic.twitter.com/zI1GumCyn0— NFL (@NFL) October 23, 2020
The unofficial end of Jones’ reign came Monday when a source confirmed an NFL Network report that Jones is being benched. This move was inevitable after the Giants’ embarrassing 20-17 overtime loss to the Panthers in Germany in Week 10. Jones’ poor play was a major reason the Giants couldn’t score against the NFL’s worst defense.
With the 2-8 Giants on their bye week, this was the logical time for a quarterback change to give backup Tommy DeVito — who was chosen over No. 2 QB Drew Lock — time to prepare to take over. The Giants went 3-13 in games started by Jones over the past two seasons, and they rank last in the league in scoring this season. His career record is 24-44-1.
The official end of Jones’ time with the Giants will come sometime after the season when the team releases him two years into the four-year, $160 million extension he signed in 2023. Jones, 27, will look to revitalize his career in a new setting, while the Giants will earnestly pursue a replacement this offseason.
Giants fans booed after the team drafted Jones with the No. 6 pick in the 2019 NFL Draft. (Michael Wade / Icon Sportswire)
The boos rained down at the draft party hosted by the Giants at MetLife Stadium when Jones was announced as the sixth pick in the 2019 draft. Factors outside of Jones’ control led to the chilly greeting from the fan base.
GO DEEPER
After 49ers bash Daniel Jones, it begs the question: Why does Giants QB get so much hate?
There was little faith in then-general manager Dave Gettleman, with many believing it was a reach to take Jones with a top-10 pick after he compiled a 17-19 record at Duke. But Jones won over fans, teammates and the rest of the organization in Week 3 of his rookie season when he replaced franchise icon Eli Manning as the starting quarterback.
Jones engineered an 18-point second-half comeback in Tampa Bay, throwing for two touchdowns and rushing for two more, including the game-winner with 1:16 remaining. But the swagger Jones showed in his debut was fleeting.
Fielding a woeful supporting cast around Jones, the Giants lost nine straight games during his rookie season. Still, he demonstrated playmaking ability under coach Pat Shurmur while throwing 24 touchdown passes, which remains the highwater mark of his career by a wide margin.
Shurmur was fired after Jones’ rookie season and replaced by Joe Judge. He and offensive coordinator Jason Garrett focused on eliminating Jones’ ball security issues after he had an NFL-high 19 fumbles as a rookie. In the process, they eliminated the young quarterback’s aggressiveness.
Jones cut back on his turnovers at the expense of throwing the ball downfield. He combined for 21 touchdown passes in two seasons under Judge and Garrett. The second season was cut short due to a neck injury that sidelined Jones for the final six games in 2021.
The coaching changes, a perennially poor offensive line and a lack of playmakers led Giants co-owner John Mara to proclaim after the 2021 season that, “We’ve done everything possible to screw this kid up.”
Jones received a clean slate when Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll replaced Gettleman and Judge, respectively, after the 2021 season. One of the new regime’s first major decisions was declining Jones’ fifth-year option for the 2023 season. That set up the 2022 season as a prove-it year for Jones.
He rose to the occasion. Using his legs more than ever, Jones engineered an efficient offense that relied on running back Saquon Barkley and opportunistic passing.
Jones still only threw for 15 touchdowns, but he added another seven rushing to lead the Giants to a surprising 9-7-1 record and their first playoff appearance in six years. Once in the postseason, Jones raised his game to an inconceivable level in a 31-24 wild-card round win at Minnesota.
The performance was treated as vindication for Mara, who declared, “We’re back,” in the victorious locker room. The mood was far more somber a week later when the Giants were steamrolled 38-7 by the Eagles in the divisional round.
Despite the bitter end to the season, the optimism about Jones within the organization was unbridled. Schoen affirmed that Jones, who was set to be an unrestricted free agent, would be back with the Giants in his season-ending news conference days after the loss to the Eagles.
That wasn’t a simple process, as Schoen tried to simultaneously negotiate with Jones and Barkley during the 2023 offseason. When Barkley wasn’t receptive to the Giants’ initial extension offers, Schoen turned his focus to Jones.
Not forgetting the fifth-year option slight, which would have locked Jones in at $22.4 million for 2023, the quarterback drove a hard bargain at the negotiating table. With talks coming down to the franchise tag deadline, the Giants and Jones agreed to a four-year, $160 million extension. The Giants immediately pivoted to tagging Barkley minutes before the deadline.
If there’s one decision Schoen could do over in his three years, it has to be that one. Rather than giving in to Barkley with a contract worth roughly $25 million guaranteed, Schoen wound up guaranteeing $82 million to Jones. Schoen was mindful of maintaining an escape hatch, however, so the Giants can cut Jones after two seasons while eating a manageable $22.2 million in dead money on the salary cap.
The worst fears of committing to Jones were realized immediately during a disastrous 2023 season. Jones went 1-5 in six starts while suffering a second neck injury that sidelined him for three games before a torn ACL in his right knee ended his season in Week 9.
With buyer’s remorse established, Schoen and Daboll extensively scouted a potential replacement in the 2024 draft. The problem was that the Giants were picking sixth and the teams with the top three picks desperately needed quarterbacks.
Schoen tried in vain to trade with the Patriots for the third pick, but New England took North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye. With Maye, USC’s Caleb Williams and LSU’s Jayden Daniels off the board, the Giants chose not to take a quarterback.
It marked the fifth straight draft since Jones was selected that the Giants didn’t add a quarterback. Instead, they used the sixth pick on LSU wide receiver Malik Nabers in the hopes that the dynamic playmaker could help unlock Jones in another make-or-break year.
Nabers has flashed his talent, but it hasn’t made a difference. Jones has proven incapable of leading a high-octane offense.
The breaking point came in Munich. Jones threw two interceptions in the red zone to kill scoring drives. His most egregious play, however, was taking a sack on a flea flicker despite Nabers and wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson running wide open on the trick play.
There’s financial incentive to sit Jones, who has made $108 million in his career, because he has a $23 million injury guarantee in his contract. If he suffers a major injury that will prevent him from passing a physical in mid-March, the Giants will be on the hook for $12 million. Another $11 million would become guaranteed at the start of next season. The savings from cutting Jones this offseason would be wiped out if the injury guarantee was triggered.
The injury guarantee is a valid reason to bench Jones, especially as he has repeatedly rammed himself into defenders on runs this season. But finances aside, the Giants simply couldn’t trot Jones out again in front of a hostile home crowd that has seen the team lose all five of its games at MetLife Stadium this season.
The Giants can no longer afford to take the financial risk of playing Jones. (Cooper Neill / Getty Images)
No one has ever questioned Jones’ intangibles. He’s tough, hard-working and an exemplary teammate.
Jones is cut from the same cloth as Manning, down to having the same personal quarterback trainer and college coach. But for all of the similarities between the quarterbacks, Jones lacks the traits that made Manning one of the best big-game quarterbacks of his era.
Jones seemed too determined to copy Manning’s ability to sidestep controversy in the New York media market. Perhaps being wound so tight can explain why Jones performed so much worse at home — 29 touchdowns and 30 interceptions in 35 career home games compared to 41 touchdowns and 17 interceptions in 35 career road games.
The Giants scored a touchdown three plays after Jones’ meme-worthy stumble four years ago, and they were in position for a rare win at Philadelphia late in the game when he floated a pass to tight end Evan Engram. A catch could have sealed the win; instead, the perfect pass slipped through Engram’s fingertips.
Jones’ stumble and Engram’s drop were representative of this forgettable six-year period. The failures weren’t all Jones’ fault, but he also wasn’t able to overcome the circumstances around him.
So Jones’ time is up in New York. The Giants are now on the clock to get it right on their next swing at a quarterback.
(Photo illustrations: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; top photo: Cooper Neill / Getty Images)
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Oba Femi and Brock Lesnar’s feud will come to a head at SummerSlam in August, and the showdown has the potential to be WWE’s match of the year.
Femi beat Lesnar at WrestleMania 42 and led to “The Beast Incarnate” deciding to retire – at least for a moment – at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Lesnar made a dramatic return a few weeks later, challenging and beating Femi at Clash in Italy.
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Oba Femi looks on during Monday Night RAW at Allstate Arena on July 6, 2026, in Chicago, Illinois. (Melina Pizano/WWE via Getty Images)
At SummerSlam, Femi and Lesnar will do battle inside a Hell in a Cell.
WWE Hall of Famer John Bradshaw Layfield called the next meeting between Femi and Lesnar a “generational matchup.”
“I’ve never seen anything like Oba – well, I have. I’ve seen Brock,” he told Fox News Digital. “It’s very much the carbon copy of Brock coming in. Brock coming in was like, oh my God, who is this guy? The guy can even talk, and he’s gonna be one of the biggest stars in wrestling. Not only could he talk, he’s a really smart guy. Brock became one of the biggest draws in professional wrestling. He came one of the biggest draws in UFC. It’s an unbelievable story, and now you got somebody who can rival that character.
Brock Lesnar in action against Oba Femi during “Monday Night Raw” at TD Garden on March 23, 2026, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Michael Owens/WWE via Getty Images)
“This Oba Femi comes out with the silly little walk he does. Everyone kinda does it, it’s like The Bushwackers. But the whole arena does it. I was in Vegas and I didn’t want to go to the matches and deal with the traffic and deal with the backstage area, and so I kinda just watched it in a sports bar. I stood in the back where nobody could recognize me, and as soon as Oba came out, the entire sports bar was sitting there doing that Oba Femi dance. The guy is just unbelievably over.
“I really think that somewhere in the NFL this year, you’re going to see an entire NFL arena doing this dance. You’re gonna have somebody like Saquon Barkley or ‘King’ (Derrick Henry) or some of these guys do this dance, and it’s infectious. Once one of them does, one of these great running backs or wide receivers, or somebody scores a touchdown, that’s when I think you’re gonna see entire arenas doing it. I just think Oba Femi is lightning in a bottle and Brock has always been that way. This is, to me, a generational matchup.”
Brock Lesnar and Oba Femi face off during WrestleMania 42: Night 2 at Allegiant Stadium on April 19, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE via Getty Images)
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SummerSlam will take place on Aug. 1 and 2 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
Sports
Commentary: ‘I don’t want any handouts.’ Amid the Angels’ drought, a starry homecoming for Mike Trout
Mike Trout last played in an All-Star Game seven years ago. It’s crazy, really. The best player of the previous decade, the link that ties Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols to Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, has not taken an All-Star at-bat this decade.
Injuries, mostly. And he turns 35 next month.
Next week’s All-Star Game takes place in Philadelphia, about 40 miles north of Trout’s hometown of Millville, N.J. Major League Baseball reserves a potential All-Star roster spot or two each summer for distinguished players: Bryce Harper and Justin Verlander this year, Clayton Kershaw last year, Pujols and Miguel Cabrera in past years.
That could have been Trout’s spot this summer: a worthy honor for a three-time most valuable player, a local hero feted on the national stage the Angels have failed to provide him.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” Trout said.
Not even at home?
“It’s an honor to get voted in and represent the American League,” he said. “For me, I don’t want any handouts.”
Trout is an All-Star for the 12th time, the old-fashioned way: He earned it.
Fans voted him into the starting lineup, with the most final-round votes of any AL outfielder. His peers voted him as one of the top three outfielders in the AL.
“It means a lot,” he said. “I’ve been through a lot of hurdles, a lot of adversity. I put some hard work in, and I did not let up. I could have easily got down on myself and not pushed through it and not come back.
“I know what I am capable of. I know I have the confidence to get back to the player I used to be.”
His .874 OPS entering play Thursday ranks second among AL outfielders, a career season for many players. In 11 of his 14 full seasons — all but the previous three — he has posted a higher OPS.
In April, in a four-game series against the New York Yankees, Trout hit five home runs and drove in nine runs.
“Everything was clicking,” he said. “When I first came up, that’s how I felt the whole season.
“Just to be able to get that feeling back, that little spark, to know it’s still in there, it makes you feel pretty good.”
For him, so does playing in Philadelphia. The first time he played there with the Angels, Millville basically closed down for the night, and just about everyone in town boarded a bus to the game. Then Trout had an exceptionally rare experience, a visiting player cheered at the home of the boo.
Mark Gubicza can testify to that. Gubicza, the two-time All-Star pitcher and now the Angels’ television analyst, grew up in Philadelphia.
“I don’t care if you were God himself, if you were wearing a different color uniform, I was still booing you,” Gubicza said. “But he was cheered.”
Still is. Trout is a diehard Philadelphia Eagles fan, with his season tickets not in some climate-controlled luxury suite but along the sideline.
“The players all walk by him and say ‘Trouty!’ ” Gubicza said. “Before they all go out to get their heads beat in, they’re all saying hi.
“He’s not one of those guys that comes there to be seen. He’s going there to root. That’s why they love him: He’s one of us.”
Said Trout: “I know how passionate I am about the Eagles. From my experience as an Eagles fan, it’s just different.
“It’s like win or die.”
It’s not like that in Southern California, where almost no one listens to sports-talk radio, and where a nice day is always a day away.
No one would begrudge Trout for living year-round along the Orange County coast. (OK, maybe Philadelphia fans would.)
Roy Hallenbeck, Trout’s high school coach, remembered visiting years ago on what he called “a perfect day” and asking Trout how he could ever get tired of all that sunshine.
“Yeah, coach, I couldn’t live here,” Trout told him. “‘I need my seasons.”
Trout built a family home near his boyhood home. He built his Trout National golf resort, with a course designed by Tiger Woods, in Millville.
He is as loyal to the Angels as he is to Millville. He appreciates the team that “took a chance on a kid from a little town in southern New Jersey” and signed him to two nine-figure contract extensions.
Trout was the last Angels player to take a postseason at-bat, in 2014. Even amid baseball’s longest playoff drought, he still considers Anaheim a special place, and always will.
“It’s where it all began,” Trout said. “I think the fuel of people doubting us kind of makes it more of a fire for me to try to get back to the playoffs. I think that’s the biggest key for me.
“Could I take the easy way out and just leave? Yeah. But I think — I said this last year around this time, but it’s the same feeling I’ve been having — I really haven’t sat down and talked to anybody about it specifically, but I know there’s a time where, if things change, who knows? I don’t know. But, for me, right now, my focus is on trying to get this club back in the playoffs.”
At the All-Star Game, Trout might well hear Phillies fans beseech him to come play for the home team. However, Hallenbeck said, the hometown folks no longer are as strident in that long-held wish.
“I think the overriding sentiment of most people I talk with, even Phillies fans, is we would all — as people that know him, love him and care for him — love to watch him play relevant baseball in August and September,” Hallenbeck said. “It doesn’t matter where. It doesn’t matter who. Just being relevant late in the season would be something we would all love to see.
“Hopefully, it’s with the Angels. They’ve been so good to him. We’d love to see it there.”
So would we. In the meantime, in the absence of a World Series, Trout deserves to enjoy his homecoming game.
Sports
London descends into disorder as Morocco fans flood streets after World Cup elimination by France
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Public unrest began in parts of London late Thursday night, and it appears Morocco’s exit from the 2026 FIFA World Cup at the hands of France is the reason.
France took down Morocco 2-0, eliminating the African country for the second consecutive tournament, this time in a quarterfinal match.
As a result, many feared Paris would erupt into riots, especially after the chaos that followed Paris Saint-Germain’s UEFA Champions League victory over Arsenal in May.
Instead, images and videos from Edgware Road in northwest London showed police clashing with large crowds as smoke billowed through the streets and debris littered the roadway.
A police vehicle is parked in a road as people from pro-Palestinian activist groups gather near the Edgware United Synagogue during a demonstration against the “Great Israeli Real Estate Event” organized by real-estate agency My Home in Israel, which markets property in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, in London, Britain, June 14, 2026. (Toby Shepheard)
Riot police, equipped with shields and body armor, tried to contain the crowds as they clashed with people launching fireworks and throwing debris. One video also appeared to show an officer down.
KYLIAN MBAPPÉ, OUSMANE DEMBÉLÉ FIRE FRANCE INTO WORLD CUP SEMIFINALS WITH WIN OVER MOROCCO
It’s unknown what happened to the officer who was down on the asphalt or how he was injured.
Fans waved Moroccan flags in the middle of the streets, which held up traffic. Some even jumped on top of vehicles trying to get through the area.
Moroccan fans in the stands before a FIFA World Cup 2026 quarterfinal match between France and Morocco at Boston Stadium July 9, 2026, in Foxborough, Mass. (Richard Sellers/SportsphotoAllstar)
Similar scenes unfolded after Egypt’s World Cup exit, when Argentina rallied for a controversial 3-2 victory that featured several disputed officiating decisions.
Paris, on the other hand, looked more like a city celebrating than one on the brink of a riot. Supporters of both France and Morocco flooded the streets, slowing traffic in several parts of the city.
One video showed horns blasting from cars with French and Moroccan flags out the windows on the L’avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Supporters on the side of the road, waving their own flags, joined in on the celebration.
France’s Kylian Mbappé scored his eighth goal of this World Cup, which ties him for the most with Argentina’s Lionel Messi. Ousmane Dembélé also scored in the second half for France in the 2-0 win over Morocco.
It’s the third straight semifinal appearance for France, while Morocco still made World Cup history despite the loss. After becoming the first African country to reach the quarterfinals and semifinals in World Cup history in 2022, Morocco added to that by becoming the first-ever African nation to reach more than one quarterfinal.
Moroccan fans react while attending a watch party for the World Cup round of 8 match between France and Morocco in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 2026. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP)
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Morocco’s exit means there are no more African nations alive in the World Cup. France will be taking on the winner of Spain and Belgium, while England and Norway and Argentina and Switzerland face off in the quarterfinals.
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