Can't rush judgement
With zero ground game, hard to think Jones could succeed like Eli in Year 2
IT NEEDS to be a fair fight. An honest appraisal. It needs to be a comparison worth making. Daniel Jones in Year 2 vs. Eli Manning in year Year 2 is about as revealing as Superman’s X-ray vision through lead.
Manning went 11-5 in his first full season as an NFL starting quarterback, setting the foundation for his legacy. The only way Jones gets to 11 wins in his first full season as the starter is if he has a Fantasy Football team and those wins are also counted (assuming he did not select any of his teammates for his squad).
There was nothing entirely special about Eli Manning, circa 2005. He completed an unsightly 52.8 percent of his passes, he fumbled nine times and his quarterback rating was 75.9. The best thing he did was hand the ball to Tiki Barber. Manning was pulling into the station and had a team around him capable of taking him on that winning ride.
Three games into his second season, all of a sudden Daniel Jones is garbage and the Giants need to be in the 2021 draft market for a replacement? Where is this coming from? He is a developing player coming off a promising rookie year and thus far the Giants have given him a tattered umbrella and told him to weather a monsoon.
Four Giants running backs this season carried the ball a total of 40 times and “gained’’ 72 yards. Traffic under the apartments funneling into the George Washington Bridge off the Cross Bronx Expressway moves with more alacrity. Take that average of 1.8 yards per attempt and compare it with the 4.7 yards the Giants’ running game averaged in 2005. You think Jones could work a little something-something if one of his play-action fakes actually, you know, faked out the defense in any discernable way? Sure, the loss of Saquon Barkley is a mighty blow. But Barkley’s first six quarters were awful and, despite his great gifts, was he really headed for a brilliance with this group paving (more like cluttering) the way in front of him?
Jones does not look good. He does not sound good, either. Hangdog expressions via Zoom interviews do not portray an entire picture, but there is little doubt losing 11 of his past 12 starts, including all three for the Joe Judge coaching regime, inspires only gloom. This is more about what is around him, though, just as Manning’s demise late in his career was mostly about the roster deterioration he was forced to endure.
Now, like then, the Giants as an organization are doing an injustice to their quarterback. Then, they compromised and ruined the latter seasons of Manning’s 16-year stay. Now, they threaten to send so many negative shock waves into Jones’ psyche that the by-product is a stigma, if not indelible, certainly difficult to scrape away.
There is no need for a history tutorial. A few gentle reminders are all it takes. Manning in 2005 had Barber (career-high 1,860 yards) to hand it to and Amani Toomer, Plaxico Burress and Jeremy Shockey to throw it to. Manning had four-fifths (Kareem McKenzie, Chris Snee, Shaun O’Hara and David Diehl) of the offensive line that protected him in Super Bowl XLII and Super Bowl XLVI. Is it any wonder the Giants were the third-best rushing team in the league? These Giants through three games are dead last.
Give Jones the No. 3 ground game and watch how indecision and hesitancy evaporates from his performance and how the turnovers melt away.
Manning was sacked 28 times in 2005. Jones is on pace this season to get dropped 48 times. He is far more athletic than Manning and is just as willing to stand in and take a hit. Sometimes he simply has no chance against a defense coming at him with complete disdain for getting beat by his running backs. This is no way to play quarterback and every reason to believe this is why Jones looks the way he looks.
Jones was not taken No. 6 in the 2019 draft to be an elite talent and annual Pro Bowler. His marching orders: Be smart and solid and poised and direct his team into a winning situation. Yes, he needs to be better. Perhaps his instincts are lacking and that special quality never surfaces, or never was there in the first place.
The operation surrounding the young Manning nurtured him into becoming a winner. The slop foisted on the young Jones is threatening to stain him as a loser.