BLOW THEM AWAY
2nd-year QB needs to impress in Windy City
A
S THE dust cleared Monday night, into Tuesday morning, the Giants were bestowed a rare gift by most of their bluetinted constituency: perspective. Most Giants fans believed the Steelers were the better team. Most have bought in, however reluctantly, to the notion of an extended rebuild.
Most figured Monday to be a lost cause going in.
So when the final score was 26-16 coming out, there was little rage, little fury, little anger directed anywhere. They’d looked respectable. They hadn’t gotten throttled. They’d made Ben Roethlisberger work for his dinner, and though there were a few agitating mistakes that could’ve made a difference in the final score, it was a stand-up effort.
(Also — and this cannot be discounted — they hadn’t looked on Monday night as hapless and as hopeless as the Jets had looked on Sunday afternoon. That mattered.)
OK, so take a bow on being reasonable and rational, Giants fans.
But that doesn’t mean you have a bottomless supply of good will and generous spirit, either. The key word Monday may have been “respectable” — the key word Sunday at Soldier Field will be something else: improvement. Fans need to see with their eyes what Giants brass tries to coax into their ears: the notion that things, overall, are trending in the right way.
This can manifest itself in many ways. As always, the offensive line is a concern. As always, the defense looked vulnerable last week, and the fact Roethlisberger was shaking off rust most of the first quarter and a half was certainly helpful. And, of course, Saquon Barkley was the subject of much of the postgame angst that rounded out the week.
But you know what would make Giants fans feel a lot better about things Sunday afternoon? If by 4:05 p.m. or so, they look up at their television screen, see Daniel Jones walk off the field, and see numbers approximating these on the screen alongside him: 20-for 30, 285 yards, two TDs, zero interceptions.
It really won’t matter what the other numbers say — Giants 20, Bears 17? Bears 35, Giants 14? Again, in a rebuilding season, you take the big-picture results as they come.
The small picture matters more. Seeing Jones respond from a high-and-low Monday night with a solid, consistent and error-free effort, that will matter more.
“It was certainly very clear to us as players when mistakes that we made were things we need to correct, and we did that. We did that together,” Jones said earlier this week, referring to the coaching that the coaches did with the Giants as a whole, him in particular. Jones was very good in spots Monday. He didn’t fumble, despite taking some vicious shots. He threw the ball well, never better than his 41-yard laser beam to Darius Slayton that gave the Giants a 10-3 lead in the second quarter. But he had those two picks: one thanks to a magnificent play by Pittsburgh’s T.J. Watt, the other a dreadful decision not helped by a hyperaggressive Steelers D.
“I thought the communication was clear,” Jones said. “I thought guys were on the same page at practice and understood the urgency and the importance of each of those corrections. There were certainly good things from the game that we also discussed and obviously want to grow with and build on. But yeah, as far as corrections and fixing mistakes, the communication was clear. I know the guys understand the urgency to which it needs to be corrected.”
Much of what Jones has done has been ahead of schedule so far. There are no longer lingering doubts that he has the goods to be an NFL quarterback as there was this time last year. He has already shown enough that he can do the job. The next step is consistency, and removing the nagging belief that no matter how well he is playing there is always a misstep lurking somewhere in the near future.
“I’ll just say this specifically on Daniel, obviously there are some things you have to clean up every game,” said Joe Judge, the Giants’ coach, whose mission is to delete that concern from Jones’ dossier and whose destiny as a coach may well ultimately rest on how well he can do that.
“I’ll tell you right now, you watch that tape from the other night, that dude stood in there like a man and delivered that ball down the field. That dude stood in there aggressively, he stood in there tough, stood in there confidently and our team feeds off that. We’re proud to have him on our team.”
Sunday, Jones can help justify that faith.