New York Giants’ quarterback Daniel Jones has been the talk of the town this season, primarily for his lack of touchdown passes and increase in turnovers.
While there’s plenty of blame to go around, Jones is undoubtedly part of the problem. He oftentimes gets stuck on his first read and is not moving on and creating with his other options. That has been a major hiccup in his game, but it is something we hadn’t seen in 2019 during his rookie campaign.
With new offensive coordinator Jason Garrett taking over playcalling duties, Jones’ mentality has changed significantly. He’s sticking to the book and not going off-script.
The one time we saw Jones go off-script, it was on an offsite play against the San Francisco 49ers when he threw a pass downfield to Darius Slayton on his back shoulder. It was a perfect play that resembled something along the lines of “success,†a word we haven’t been able to use with the offense through four weeks. He hasn’t scored a touchdown over two games and didn’t even take a red-zone snap and week three against San Francisco.
However, despite the lack of efficiency, Jones has tangible traits to become a quality starter in the NFL. A lot of the struggles have to do with lack of talent and a vanilla offensive scheme.
New safety Logan Ryan sees championship traits in Jones, who works just as hard as anyone to ensure he’s ready on game day.
“We talk a lot, he asks me questions about defense, I ask him a lot of questions about offense. I’m trying to make it hard on the quarterback, I’m trying to make it hard on him every day. He makes it hard on me,†Ryan said, per Dan Benton of the Giants Wire. “We do talk a lot. I was a high school quarterback, I couldn’t even play in college. I don’t dip my toe in it too much. Anything he needs, he knows I’m an open book. Like I said, he’s a hard worker. He’s in the building well before anybody else, me and him are.
“I believe in him, I have full faith in him. However it’s going right now, it’s four games. However many starts he has in his career, it’s a young career. He has to keep his confidence and keep growing. He has no problem being a leader, he has no problem working hard. He has no problem putting the time in, I think the Giants have the right guy when it comes to that.â€
Remaining confident with such poor statistics to show must be difficult. Jones stated on Wednesday that he believes the offense is ready to break out, and it is the perfect time to do so against a historically bad Dallas Cowboys unit.
Averaging 36.5 points per game allowed, the Giants have a fantastic match-up to break out of their funk. The problem is, the Giants have been a confidence-building team for their opponents, and they must do everything in their power not to hurt themselves.
Winning the turnover battle and having more time of possession is essential, which means establishing the ground game and utilizing play-action. I think Garrett should give Jones more creativity and the ability to decide on the go, as his one read offense simply isn’t getting the job done with a methodical Jones under center.