QB Jones set for first career start

TAMPA — Every week, Giants offensive coordinator Mike Shula and wide receivers coach Tyke Tolbert comb through the full scope of Pat Shurmur’s playbook and narrow down what will work best.

Nothing dictates the game plan more than the abilities of the starting quarterback. And with rookie Daniel Jones making his first start Sunday at Tampa Bay in place of Eli Manning, Shurmur and his assistants have an opportunity to open it up.

Expect more shots downfield. Expect mobility inside and outside the pocket.

Expect Shurmur to take full advantage of what “Danny Dimes” can do.

“You always tailor the game plan for the quarterback that’s playing, within and around the system that you run,” Shurmur said Friday. “So that’s certainly what we’re going to do.”

At the start of this week, the atmosphere at the Giants’ facility in East Rutherford was tense. But by Friday, after the big QB switch, the Giants were loose, calm and smiling much more than an 0-2 NFL team typically does.

Their confidence seems rooted in their excitement about Jones.

“In the preseason, he handled himself like a starting quarterback would,” receiver TJ Jones said of the No. 6 overall pick out of Duke. “Seeing him step in, he has”the same poise, same leadership, same calmness … Reading defenses at the pace he’s picked it up, and putting together his physical tools and mental ability to handle the playbook, I think it’s time for greatness.”

Greatness? Yes, greatness. That is how highly the Giants think of Jones. And they still don’t get why that opinion isn’t universally shared.

“That’s one of the most surprising things to me: ever since he got drafted, he’s been doing in practice, he did in the preseason,” rookie corner Corey Ballentine, who played a lot of scout-team defense against Jones’ first-string offense this week, told the Daily News. “This week he’s doing it in practice. I still don’t understand why people say all the things about him that they said when he was drafted.”

Jones’ arm strength and his accuracy on his deep passes may open everyone’s eyes for good on Sunday.

His mobility is a big difference from Manning’s stuck-in-the-pocket operations, but Jones’ ability and willingness to throw the ball downfield may take the top off the Buccaneers’ defense and become his greatest game-changing quality.

It doesn’t hurt, either, that rookie wideout Darius Slayton will be making his NFL debut, too. Tolbert did not mince words about what Slayton, the fifthround pick out of Auburn, does best.

“If you line up our entire team on the goal line and tell them to run a race,” Tolbert said, “Slayton will probably win 10 out of 10 times. He has that speed, that dimension, that we’ve been missing.”