Jones enters Year 3, and Giants still have no idea what they have at QB
Somehow it is less than a month from when the Giants started playing games that count, the first one against the Denver Broncos. Everybody loves the coach, Joe Judge, for just about everything except his record. Saquon Barkley, a running back drafted higher than any New York team has drafted a back since the Jets took the legendary Blair Thomas at No. 2 three decades ago, is on his way back after a season lost because his knee exploded.
But none of this matters if Daniel Jones isn’t a franchise quarterback, and he has still done nothing to prove that he is. Or that the Giants should have taken him with the sixth pick in the draft when he was coming out of Duke.
What we do know is this, as Jones prepares for Season 3 as the Giants starting quarterback: He didn’t get better in Season 2.
Anybody who thinks that’s a good thing, please feel free to send up a flare.
It doesn’t mean he can’t get better in Season 3. Maybe he can make the kind of jump that Josh Allen made in Buffalo, the kind of jump that has produced a new contract paying Allen all the money in the world. Allen went from throwing 10 TD passes as a rookie to 20 in his second year, then to 37. Daniel Jones went from throwing 24 as a rookie, in 13 games, to 11 last season in 14 games. And looked like what Bill Parcells used to call a JAG, and not a Jacksonville Jag. In the world according to Parcells, a
JAG means Just Another Guy.
We have heard all of the reasons — or excuses, depending on whether or not you are a Jones fan — about the kid’s, well, giant step back. He didn’t have Saquon, and he didn’t have the receivers, and he had a new offensive coordinator in Jason Garrett. He was hurt. So Jones did check a lot of boxes. But one box he didn’t check in 2020 was this: a 300-yard passing game.
You know who has 300-yard passing games in the modern, pass-happy NFL? Everybody.
You go through last season, week by week, and see that there was one NFL weekend when 11 guys threw for 300 yards. You think back on the rookie season of Justin Herbert — another No. 6 pick in the draft — and feel as if he threw for 300 twice a week. You only had to watch Herbert play a handful of games to know what kind of star he is going to be.
Buck Showalter once said this about true ace pitchers in baseball: “You know one when you see one.” But no one, off the 27 games that Jones has played so far, can say they thought they were looking at an ace last season. He did throw for 300 yards five times as a rookie. It started the day he came off the bench for Eli Manning and threw the ball all over the place as the Giants came from way behind and Jones ran in for the winning touchdown in a 32-31 victory. You read back on that game now and even see the word “legendary” in some of the headlines, because it was Jones’ first game.
He was 23-for-36 that day, threw for 336 yards, two touchdowns, ran for that game-winner. He has had some games since. He nearly did enough to beat a new Bucs team, this one with Mr. Brady at quarterback, last season. He had a big game against Washington at the end of his rookie year, on the day when the Giants won the game and lost the chance to draft Chase Young.
But in terms on excitement and promise and hitting his passes and showing how he could run, you can make the case that Jones was never better than he was in that first game at Tampa. He has played 26 games since.