This season, there’s no New York Giants player with more pressure than Daniel Jones. Patience is wearing thin in Jones’ third season in the league, and a week 1 loss where Jones fumbled the ball once and only managed one touchdown before garbage time has left many feeling restless in the wait for an improvement.
Despite the circumstances, the Giants organization has been nothing but supportive of Jones. That trend began this offseason when figures associated with the staff and front office repeatedly affirmed their faith in Jones, and has continued more recently with Joe Judge restating his confidence in the quarterback even after the recent loss.
The subject came up once again when Judge was asked if his experience being around Tom Brady in the Patriots organization has influenced his coaching of Jones.
Joe Judge stands by Daniel Jones’ preparation
“Obviously, we share experiences with all of our players from places we’ve been. You’ve got to use your experience with other players in terms of things that may have helped them along the way. I don’t try to live in the past. I don’t want to walk into anything and say, ‘this is how somebody else did it. You do it that way.’ You can’t emulate and imitate anybody,” Judge told reporters.
He would go on to praise Jones for the skills he’s worked to establish in his two seasons, including preparation.
“Daniel goes out there and practices hard every day. He goes out there and we have confidence in him because of the way he prepares on a weekly basis, doing everything it takes to be ready for the game… Do I walk in and I say, ‘Hey, I’ve had the opportunity to be around really good players at other positions. You should do it this way’? Absolutely not. Everyone’s a unique player.”
It’s clear the organization’s leaders have faith in Jones’ skills and his potential as a player, but that will become harder and harder to publicly justify if the performances don’t pick up.
Regardless of how well Jones prepares and how much he takes away from studying film, the loudest criticisms of his game have usually been about his decision making and failure to process the game fast enough.
With patience largely running out and some highly rated quarterbacks coming out of college in next year’s draft, the window for Jones to figure it out and justify the staff’s faith in him appears to be shrinking by the week. For now, the official lines are the same as always. But that might not be the case forever.