New York Giants: Daniel Jones Doesn’t Have To Be A Gunslinger to Be Great

The New York Giants are a team that’s interesting to look at for the upcoming NFL season. They have a new HC in Joe Judge, a second-year QB in Daniel Jones, and an elite RB in Saquon Barkley, yet they have many holes still. Having a new HC with limited summer camps in the NFL doesn’t help, but I think Daniel Jones can still develop as a passer. A common critique of the young QB is that Jones “can’t throw the deep ball well” or that “his arm strength is lackluster”. He may not be the NFL’s new gunslinger, but who says he needs to in order to be great?

All QBs Have Good Arm Strength

Let’s get this ridiculous notion that only a select few QBs in the NFL have “good” arm strength. If you are a starting QB in the NFL, you probably can sling it, there’s no team who would employ a QB who can’t be accurate deep. This being said obviously there are tiers to this stuff in the NFL, but let’s not act like Jones can’t drop a bomb deep down the field if he needs to.

Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers in his prime, prime Brett Farve, Peyton Manning, all these guys have transcendent arms in the eyes of many, but does an explosive arm always mean best QB? No, and while they’re great traits to have, they aren’t the only factor, and that’s important to note when evaluating QBs.

“Checkdowns” Are Not a Bad Thing

People call certain QBs “Checkdown QBs”, they label Tom Brady, Alex Smith, Kirk Cousins, and Daniel Jones as guys making easy passes and that’s it. That’s not what a short pass is, a short pass is stealing the yards the defense didn’t think you’d take. Let’s say Daniel Jones makes a short pass to Sterling Shepard and it’s for 4 yards. Now it’s 2nd down and 6 yards and Saquon Barkley then goes and grabs about 5 yards on a run. Now it’s 3rd & 1 and instead of being 3rd & 4 with an incompletion by Jones because he couldn’t find a deep option, he instead threw short and his team was able to continue building momentum.

This style of play is similar to Tom Brady, who isn’t making “easy and lazy” passes, but smart and quick reads that slowly chip away at a defense, which leads to long grueling drives that in the end leaves you with 3-7 points and the opponent a lot less time to answer back. If Daniel Jones can make quick reads and throw to Saquon or a slant to Darius Slayton, he can easily get a quick 5 or 6 yards and then let Saquon and Dion Lewis ground and pound for another down, with a mix of short and long passes and rolling our left or right, Jones can be a frustrating QB to beat; even without a transcendent arm.

Joe Judge Can Help Danny Dimes

While I’ll never even suggest that any QB can do what Tom Brady has done, it’s a good start when your new HC has worked with the Pats since 2012. That means while he won’t just steal the Pats offense, ideas of how an offense with a young QB and RB with a bruising back and a good receiving core could work can be taken from the Pats. Judge is in a situation where he has a QB that he can form not into just a great QB physically, but a smart QB.

Being a gunslinger doesn’t mean being an All-Time great, and I think Daniel Jones needs to throw smarter, not harder to be memorable for the New York Giants.