Jones needs wins to validate progress for lifeless Giants
CHICAGO — Daniel Jones made a few brilliant plays in Sunday’s fourth quarter at Soldier Field, but it’s time to stop babying the Giants’ rookie quarterback.
It’s time to stop praising him when the Giants lose and he’s part of the reason why.
Because Pat Shurmur’s reeling club lost a seventh straight game,
19-14, to the underachieving and universally-doubted
Bears. And re- gardless if Jones’ late comeback felt like a silver lining, even the rookie agreed.
It’s getting more difficult to judge his progress positively this deep into a 2-9 season without wins to validate his play (not to mention to protect the Giants’ current regime).
“I can try to look specifically at certain things to feel progression or improvement,” said Jones, who completed 21-of-36 passes for 150 yards and two touchdowns. “But overall, if you’re not winning games, if you’re not getting the results, it’s going to be disappointing. And you’re certainly gonna have a lot more to improve on.”
Jones is referring to his third-quarter sack fumble on his own three-yard line — a lost fumble in a fifth straight game — that handed the Bears the lead for good. He is talking about two turnovers on downs in the second half.
He is alluding to scoring just seven total points in three second quarter drives with starting field position at the Bears’ 42, 29 and 48 yard lines, respectively.
Kicker Aldrick Rosas missed 42 and 43-yard field goals, yes, his fifth straight game missing at least one kick. But when Jabrill Peppers returned a punt 40 yards to the Bears’ 29, Jones’ offense gained five yards in three plays before Rosas’ first miss.
This is not to pin it all on Jones. The Giants are objectively a bad team. Sunday’s game was downright depressing outside of Jones’ 23-yard TD pass to Golden Tate on 4thand-18 with 4:10 to play in the fourth quarter.
Their chronic losing habits were kicked off on Sunday by their star running back, Saquon Barkley, whose shocking drop of a swing pass robbed Jones of at least a 40-yard gain if not a game-opening touchdown.
“Oh man, that drop. It sucks,” said Barkley, who was shut down again outside of a late 22yard run. “Happened early in the game, probably had an opportunity to do something with it. D.J. put a great ball on me.”
Left tackle Nate Solder got beaten by Khalil Mack for the third quarter strip-sack and then let an easy fumble recovery squirt out to the Bears’ Nick Williams.
“I just whiffed it,” Solder said. “That was really hard to swallow. That was terrible. I felt really bad about that. A lot of our team is doing great. I’ve got to point at myself. Look at the point difference: We were a strip sack away from winning that game. And a lot rides on how I play and what I do, and I take full responsibility for that.”
Rookie corner Corey Ballentine got picked on relentlessly, the perfect antidote for beleaguered Bears QB Mitchell Trubisky (25-of-41, 278 yards, two total TDs, two INTs) to look like a competent NFL quarterback one week after being benched.
Rookie corner DeAndre Baker was benched at times in a rotation with Sam Beal, too.
“It’s kind of one of those things as a rookie that when they feel like you don’t understand or they can get at you, quarterbacks definitely try to pick on you,” middle linebacker
Alec Ogletree said. “But they (our rookies) played hard today. They battled well.”
The most encouraging young player was safety Julian Love, who recorded his first interception in his most extensive work yet. He played even more than intended when Jabrill Peppers went down with a hip injury that might keep him out next week.
Peppers got hurt on his kick return at the end of the first half. The Giants held their first halftime lead, 7-3, since their last win in Week 4. Peppers got hurt trying to get more.
“That was actually my call,” Peppers said of going out for the return. “I was feeling it after the punt return. I felt like I could have scored on the punt return and I wanted to make something happen for the team. It does suck, but it is what it is.”
Peppers’ absence was felt most on the Giants’ final defensive possession, when they forced a punt but didn’t have a return man on the field when the Bears rushed their punt team on at the last minute.
Shurmur admitted “with Jabrill being out, it changed up the substitution just a little.” Janoris Jenkins let the punt bounce to the Giants’ 6-yard line. And Jones’ offense, which had just gone 97 yards in 11 plays, didn’t have another full field drive in them.
Making the game close at the end, however, was misleading.
The Giants have lost seven in a row for the first time since Tom Coughlin’s second-to-last season in 2014. They have lost to the Cardinals (3-7-1), Lions (3-7-1), Jets (4-7) and Bears (5-6), who had lost five of six coming in.
And the losing streak easily could hit nine against the Packers (8-2) and Eagles (5-6) over the next two weeks.
But the worst part is that the Giants have slid so far, their remaining games against the Dolphins (2-9) and Washington (2-9) are no longer gimmes, either.
So it’s hard to believe this could get any worse. But it can.