The Giants lost another game this past weekend. (No surprise there.) 31-16 to the Dolphins. They kept the explosive Dolphins offense somewhat in check and picked off Tua Tagavailoa twice, but made up for it by allowing over 10 yards per rush and over 200 yards rushing on the ground. They did get their first defensive turnover of the season.. in Week 5.. and still failed to score an offensive touchdown. If you take away their second half surge against the Cardinals, they’re scoring just over six points a game. They look like the worst team in the NFL right now. Probably worse than the Jets, who beat the Bills in Week 1, beat Denver last week, and nearly beat the Chiefs the week before. The Broncos are pretty bad, but at least their offense is a little better than ours. The Panthers are winless, but that’s to be expected with a new regime. I’m still confident Bryce Young can be good if he has an offensive line. And the Cardinals, despite preseason No 1 pick projections and silly speeches from Jonathan Gannon, have shown some fight and even upset the Cowboys. But the Giants can’t score, can’t block, can’t keep guys healthy, can’t keep their composure, and are just the embarrassment and laughingstock of the NFL right now. Unfortunately, it’s become familiar territory.
Oh, and unfortunately, Daniel Jones got hurt, as was bound to happen eventually. Jones has gotten the snot beat out of him this season while playing behind this joke of an offensive line. Before leaving the Dolphins game, he had been sacked six times. The prior week, he had been sacked ten times. That’s sixteen sacks in two weeks. That’s 28 sacks on the season for Jones, in less than five games. His sack rate before this year had never before hit double digits. This season it’s at 15.6%. That’s the highest in the league. The next highest belongs to first year Washington starter Sam Howell at 13.2%.
Jones is being pressured on nearly half his dropbacks. Not only is this offensive line the worst in the league, it’s one of the worst I’ve ever seen, and probably the worst I’ve ever seen on the Giants. That’s saying something considering the Giants have had pass protection issues going on a decade now. The last time I remember it being this bad was 2013, a year that saw Eli Manning throw 18 touchdowns to 27 interceptions. Manning was so bad that year that it prompted a coordinator change to try to teach Manning to get rid of the ball quicker. (The new coordinator hired was Ben McAdoo. I’ll leave it at that.)
It is definitely true that quarterbacks have a lot to do with their own pressure. It’s up to them to read the defense and get rid of the ball on time, as well as to move in the pocket to avoid pressure. Sack percentage is often a result of play style more than anything else, and most quarterbacks have fairly consistent sack rates throughout their careers. It’s why mobile QBs that know they can extend the play and therefore tend to hold the ball longer–like Russell Wilson, Michael Vick, and Ben Roethlisberger–were typically sacked more often than guys like Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, and Drew Brees, who aimed to get the ball out of their hands as quickly as possible. The latter group, not having as much mobility to rely on, had to learn to read the defense as efficiently as possible and to get the ball out when under pressure. Typically, this is the better and more efficient way to play.
But this is only true to a certain point. If you’re getting pressured as soon as you dropback to pass, you’re going to struggle, no matter who you are. Pressure made it so that Tom Brady and Peyton Manning’s record setting offenses were only able to come up with 14 and 8 points in the 2007 and 2013 Super Bowls. Pressure on Patrick Mahomes in Super Bowl 55 held the Chiefs offense out of the endzone, which pretty much never happens. (Of course Brady was on the other side to reap the praise that the defense earned, as has so often been the case throughout his postseason career.) Hell look at Joe Burrow right now. Yes, he’s injured and immobile, which has a lot to do with it, but his offensive line has struggled to start the season and he was struggling to hit 100 yards and 6 yards per attempt. On the flipside, look at Jalen Hurts, who has all day to throw behind that Eagles line, and it’s no coincidence that the Eagles were just in the Super Bowl and could very well go back.
This stuff matters, and right now, Daniel Jones is not in a position where it is possible for him to succeed. Now, does that mean the offense wouldn’t look better if, say, Patrick Mahomes were at the helm? Of course it would! Patrick Mahomes is a better Quarterback than Daniel Jones! But you can acknowledge that Jones has his flaws and may not be the long term answer while simultaneously acknowledging that the current situation is not his fault. Let’s try to have some nuance here, people.
In fact, I honestly don’t know how anyone somewhat intelligent could watch the Giants and come to any other conclusion. Yes, Jones has had some bad moments. The pick in the endzone in Seattle was obviously not good. But for most of the time that the Giants offense has been on the field, including that game, Jones has been getting hit or under pressure before has a real shot at doing anything. The first game of the season saw the Giants have a field goal blocked and returned for a TD on their first drive, and then shortly after saw Barkley have a pass jarred loose and picked off and brought in for another TD. From that point, the game (and let’s be honest, the Giants season,) was pretty much over and it had nothing to do with Jones. Jones has even tried to make plays despite this dysfunction at times. There was that Barkley drop I just mentioned (he had another drop turn into a pick the following week), a Waller drop on a key third down against SF, and Waller also dropped a TD last week. Waller and Barkley are supposed to be your stars. They have to make those plays. And yet you see people say that those plays are on Jones, that he laid Barkley out on that week 1 play, or that the pass was too high for Waller on that third down. Please. Both those balls were catchable. People just want to pile on Jones.
In fact, for years, Giants fans would blame Eli Manning’s struggles on the offensive line, and those offensive lines were better than the one that Daniel Jones is playing behind. Now Jones is hurt, and despite being clobbered metaphorically by the fans off the field and very literally on the field by defenders, he still is a class act and refuses to complain or throw his teammates under the bus. So why is he getting all this undeserved hate? I’d say first, it’s because the Giants have already had a bunch of primetime games for national audiences to see, which magnifies criticism. Secondly, the Giants were a playoff team last year, so more people are paying attention to them and the expectations are higher. But I’d say what is very clearly the main reason is this: Daniel Jones signed a contract for a lot of money last offseason.
Oh no! God forbid NFL players get paid! And god forbid the team loses or they somehow play less than perfect after they do get paid! NFL players are workers just like the rest of us, yet nothing creates more anger among fans than players getting paid. (Or kneeling during the anthem. Or genuinely having an opinion about anything that shows that they are actual human beings and not just objects for your entertainment.)
While it is valid to raise expectations after a player gets paid, it doesn’t mean they magically become Superman. Jones getting paid didn’t magically make him a different quarterback, it didn’t magically make the offensive line not suck, and it isn’t the reason that the offensive line and the team currently does suck.
But let’s talk about the contract, because it has gotten a lot of negative press, and it’s always the easy thing to bring up. And of course, most people seem to think that it was a mistake. Is that a reasonable take?
Jones’s contract was for 4 years and 160 million dollars. But like most NFL contracts, that number is a lie. When you look at the guaranteed money, it’s really a two year 82 million dollar deal. The Giants can get out after next year if he’s not the guy and will only owe 22 million in dead cap. I’m not entirely sure how that works, but my understanding is while it’s not great, it’s not a ton either. Bottom line is, there are only 82 million dollars guaranteed in this deal, so that’s how it should be looked at. It’s a two year prove it deal. Jones’s average 40 million dollar salary per year is still a lot! It’s 12th highest in the NFL, tied with Dak Prescott and Matthew Stafford and just above Aaron Rodgers.
But what people don’t get is that Quarterbacks are expensive in today’s NFL. There’s really no market for a middle-tier quarterback. Rookies get paid very little on their first deal, and then they want the bank on their next deal. It’s strictly about positional value at the most important position on the field. Let’s not forget that the Giants declined Jones’s fifth year option, which means that he played through his entire rookie contract without a bonus. He wanted to get paid, and that’s his prerogative. Jones isn’t thinking about his place in the NFL QB hierarchy when making contract demands; he’s thinking about taking care of himself and his family. Furthermore, Jones getting paid with the 12th best average yearly salary doesn’t make him the 12th best QB in the league, it just means he was one of the more recent ones to get paid. Every QB that gets paid is usually temporarily the highest paid QB. Each new deal resets the market. There’s nothing wrong with this either, because the cap is a percentage of league revenue, and as league revenue grows, so does the cap.
What I’m saying is, a two year 40 million a year deal isn’t that unreasonable for a QB who showed some promise last year. As former NFL front office man Joe Banner explained on 33rd team, this was actually financially prudent for the Giants. If you have to keep tagging a guy, you end up costing yourself more in the long run, like the Commanders did back in the day with Kirk Cousins. Tagging Jones would have given the Giants less cap space to work with than this deal did. Furthermore, the Giants wanted to get ahead of the market, which it shows that they did. Justin Herbert and Joe Burrow went on to sign megadeals. If the Giants had waited, Jones would have had more leverage and asking power. And for those who think they should have saved the money for Barkley, how’s that working out? Barkley is injured yet again. Tagging him was the right move. The reality is that both Jones and Barkley got prove it deals, they just reflected the value of their relative positions.
But for those who think I’m beating around the bush and think the Giants should have let Jones walk, I’ll tell you what I’ve thought about Jones as a player, his career on the whole, and the decision to extend him, putting money mostly aside.
I didn’t write about it at the time, but I hated the Jones pick. HATED it. I hated the Barkley pick the year before, and I was about 10x as mad at this one as I was at that. Jones pleasantly surprised me his rookie year, although he still had a lot of work to do with turnovers, particularly the fumbles where his pocket awareness was close to nonexistent. But he showed some aggression as a passer, which was refreshing after years of an aging Eli becoming a checkdown machine.
For some reason, the Giants fired Pat Shurmur after that year. I’m not going to pretend that he was a great head coach, but when you have a rookie that looks good in your offensive head coach’s system, it’s not a good idea to change things up. Even worse, Mara retained Gettleman. He hired Joe Judge and Jason Garrett as head coach and OC, a pairing that didn’t inspire anybody. The next two years I saw very little to inspire me in Jones, even as delusional Giants fans proclaimed he was the next Eli Manning and would lead us to the Super Bowl. His efficiency numbers hovered around the same, but the 24 touchdowns he threw as a rookie is still his career high.
Last year, the Giants declined Jones’s fifth year option. Schoen and Daboll wanted to evaluate him for themselves. They did, and they liked what they saw. Early in the season, Jones was his usual mediocre self while Barkley carried the load. But as the season went on, Barkley started to fade down the stretch, and Jones began to improve. It culminated with a playoff win over the Vikings where DJ was phenomenal and set playoff records, before the Giants ultimately would succumb to the far superior Eagles the following week.
Jones last year threw for 3205 yards and 15 touchdowns to 5 interceptions with 6.8 yards per attempt. Those numbers are hardly worth writing home about in today’s offensive pass-heavy NFL, but he was better than the numbers would suggest. He made stick throws in important moments late in the season with a fading running game and not a lot of weapons to speak of, all in the first year of a new system. He also had his best year on the ground by far, rushing for 708 yards and 7 touchdowns for 5.9 yards per carry. His QBR last year was sixth, and he was fourth in rushing EPA behind only Justin Fields, Josh Allen, and Jalen Hurts. I’ve always been of the opinion that Jones is an average at best passer if you ask him to be a pocket only guy, but that he can be a valuable asset if you include him in your gameplan as a runner. Garrett was too stupid to do that, but at least last year, Daboll was smart enough to do so, and it paid off. Not to mention, the coaches have always loved Jones as a person. That in and of itself doesn’t make you a good quarterback, but it matters for something.
So coming off of last year, Daboll and Schoen had an overachieving team that made the playoffs and even won a playoff game with the quarterback of that team due for an extension. That quarterback played well and showed improvement in the first year of the scheme. Daboll and Schoen had a decision to make: Either commit to Jones for a few more years, or let him test the market. Obviously, they ended up choosing the former.
When I saw initially saw the deal, I wasn’t thrilled with it, but I understood it. You had a guy that you had evidence worked well in your system. In theory, that system was going to be around for a long time, as Daboll wasn’t going anywhere after last year (this year casts a bit of doubt on that, but the Giants still aren’t going to clean shop any time soon.) The price was high, yes, but again, quarterbacks are expensive. After last year’s success, most people seemed to understand that the Giants had to find a way to keep DJ around for at least another year. The number I saw floating around was somewhere around 30-35 million dollars a year. DJ ended up getting 40. Maybe that’s an overpay relative to value, but does an extra 5 million a year really make that much of a difference? You also have to factor in that DJ wanted 50 million a year. So this was really a compromise on both sides. That’s how negotiations work.
Should the Giants have let DJ walk? Maybe. I think there are arguments for both sides. But hindsight is 20/20, and let’s not pretend it was a given one way or another. In virtue of actually winning games last year, the Giants weren’t picking high, which meant they didn’t have a shot at a top quarterback. So if you let DJ go, you have to find another qb. Tyrod Taylor, currently on the roster, is a good backup, but he’s not a long term option, and he tends to get hurt a lot. That means finding another bridge QB, of which there aren’t a ton of great ones out there. Bridge QBs also, by definition, only provide you an answer for so long. If the Giants start the year struggling with a different qb, which they almost certainly would have considering the state of the roster, you would have heard a ton of people asking why the Giants chose to let Daniel Jones go after making the playoffs and winning a playoff game.
The only other option then, would have been to let Jones test the market and try to find a better deal. That’s risky, and even if he wouldn’t have been able to do so and you end up resigning him for less, you’re still starting things off on the wrong foot with your QB, which is not where you want to be heading into the season. Jones probably isn’t a franchise QB, but on the off chance he is, the extra money is worth it.
But the Giants cannot evaluate Daniel Jones behind this offensive line, and again, anyone who’s watching the games and doesn’t already dislike Jones can see that. Does that mean Jones has been perfect on every play? Of course not. Can you find individual plays where Jones is protected and still makes the wrong decision? Of course! There’s been a video circulating among Giants fans where ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky points some of these plays out. But that’s the funny thing about pressure: If you’re under enough, it affects your decision making even on plays where there isn’t any! Cherry picking random plays where DJ is clean and still makes the wrong read doesn’t change this. If you want him to be perfect because he signed a big contract, fine, but that’s a stupid stance to take, and it’s not how football works. (Kurt Warner also recently opined that what’s going on in NY isn’t on Daniel Jones. FWIW, Warner was just a little bit better of a QB than Dan Orlovsky.)
Again, we live in a world where QBs have to be either great or awful. DJ is neither. If I had to, I’d say he’s probably closer to the bottom than the top. Probably around the 20th best QB in the NFL. He’s definitely a guy who’s dependent on his surroundings to win. But that is true of 99% of QBs out there. There aren’t that many Mahomes’s in the league. Until you find one, you try to build a team around the guy you have. And again, that doesn’t change the fact that he was pretty good last year! I’m not saying he’s the future, or that if the Giants are picking high they shouldn’t take a quarterback. They almost definitely should. But Giants fans are in for a rude awakening if they think a new QB is going to play well behind this kind of protection or fix all the other issues on this team.
As for the aforementioned line, there’s not a clear solution in sight. The Giants can’t even keep their line healthy, and the starters aren’t that good to begin with. Evan Neal, the seventh overall pick in last year’s draft, a week after freaking out at the fans for criticizing him and later having to apologize, seemed to forget he was playing football against the Dolphins and let a pass rusher go right by him without moving. Neal looks awful right now, but he was a high pick for a reason–the guy was supposed to be a good prospect! You have to hope that, similar to Andrew Thomas, he’s just going through growing pains right now and eventually improves. It’s not looking great, but you can’t pull the plug yet. But the fact remains, the Giants have not ignored the line. The guys they’ve gotten just aren’t that good.
I read a comment on a Giants article which made a seemingly good point, which is that it seems like good teams build their line with a few veteran anchors and then fill in the holes with the draft, but that it’s tough to build an entire line through the draft, as the Giants seem to be trying to do. That may very well be true. It’s seemed to me in recent years that it’s gotten a lot harder to draft offensive lineman than it used to be, and that those guys are struggling to adjust to the NFL. I think a lot of that has to do with how the spread game has overtaken college football. Offensive lines around the NFL seem to have been in decline the past few years. QBs are certainly getting sacked more. I saw another comment that said that the NFL product overall isn’t very good right now, and that it’s hard to build if you don’t already have a core of stars. That seems to be true as well. There isn’t a lot of parity in the NFL right now. There are a few good teams with established talent (49ers, Eagles), and everyone else is trying to build something. Of course, that doesn’t justify the Giants being this bad, but it is worth taking into account.
To that point, the Giants don’t really have any veteran leadership right now, and it seems like no one wants to wake this team up when things aren’t going their way. At this point, you can’t let coaching off the hook either. This mess is on everyone.
While we all would love for there to be some magic switch to make things better, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. I wouldn’t mind seeing a new offensive line coach in the building, if only for the sake of saying you tried something, but Daboll hasn’t indicated that he’s planning on doing that. The Giants are looking at free agent lineman, but at this point they just need bodies at the position. It’s unlikely that guys that are already out there unsigned are the answer. As I mentioned in my last article, I would love to see the Giants get back into doing what they did last year on offense in addition to maybe at least trying to use Jalin Hyatt on deep shots–as opposed to whatever bland scheme they’re running now. They could at least try to run the ball and do play action, or use DJ on option plays. Maybe they’re afraid to injure him, but you’re more likely to get injured on scrambles than options anyway, and right now the pocket seems to be the most dangerous place for him.
The Giants had some success last year, but the football gods made sure to punish them for that, as they currently look as bad as they’ve looked over the past decade, which is stunning considering the fact that they finally seemed to be doing things right.
Regardless, things are likely to keep getting worse before they get better. Giants fans are sadly, once again, likely gonna have to wait this thing out.
But please, can we stop acting like this is somehow Daniel Jones’s fault? I know New York fans are tired of losing, and I know he’s an easy scapegoat. But the guy has no chance out there right now, and until the Giants fix that, they’re not going to be winning any more games.
Cary Krongard's Football Blog 