It’s over. Done. What else do you need to see? It’s been five years of the same excruciatingly painful reality slapping the Giants in the face on a near weekly basis. You’d think that would be enough to make them realize the one season of baseline competence was nothing more than an accident, but here they are.
On Monday night, against the Pittsburgh Steelers, they trotted out Daniel Jones as their quarterback. And, unsurprisingly, he lost them the game. Twice he turned it over in the fourth quarter with a chance to score and tie the game with the ensuing two-point conversion. The final one on a miserable interception sent six feet over an open Devin Singletary‘s head.
Final score: Steelers 26, Giants 18.
It’s time for head coach Brian Daboll to do what he flirted with a week ago against Philadelphia. The Jones Era with the Giants needs to end. Is Drew Lock the right answer? Tommy DeVito? That’s unclear.
But it’s time for New York to own up to the fact Jones is very clearly the wrong one.
You can lament the Giants’ decision to not have a contingency plan in place for an Andrew Thomas injury until you’re blue in the face. That is a wild case of roster mismanagement. GM Joe Schoen told anyone who would listen that the tackle’s absence derailed their 2023 season. Knowing that, to have to scramble to add Chris Hubbard off the San Francisco 49ers practice squad because your backup, Josh Ezeudu, was so bad you had to give up on him after a week? Ridiculous.
But this is not about the line. It’s not about the defense’s poor tackling. It’s not about the coverage breakdowns. It’s not about another special teams meltdown. It’s not about the horrific display of discipline evident by the 11 accepted penalties.
It’s that, for four quarters, Jones, who is now an almost-unbelievable 1-15 in primetime games, went out there and again showed anyone with a functioning pair of eyes and elementary understanding of football that he is not it.
Darius Slayton broke free up the left sideline. Jones hesitated, threw late, high, and a big Minkah Fitzpatrick hit broke the play up. Malik Nabers broke free on a slant, Jones threw a pass that forced him to stop, and Nabers dropped the ball. No quarterback is perfect. Even the best have plays like that. With the game on the line, though, Jones was at his worst.
Down eight, linebacker Bobby Okereke punched the ball out of Steelers quarterback Russell Wilson’s hands on a scramble and jumped on it, giving the Giants the ball at the Steelers 34 with just under five minutes left. Four plays later, Jones lined up in the shotgun on third and seven.
Steelers’ all-world rusher T.J. Watt exploded off the line, past tackle Jermaine Eluemunor, stripped Jones and recovered it. Watt is one of the best in the game. There’s little you can do to slow him down. Daboll told reporters after the game, though, that Jones was supposed to give the line time to shift and chip Watt. He instead snapped it early, leading to the sack.
Give Daboll credit for his honesty, but that’s about as under the bus as a player can be thrown
The Giants still got the ball back after a Steelers punt. Jones drove New York to the Pittsburgh 35. This time Watt and Alex Highsmith, who sacked Jones twice and hit him six times, were on the sideline. Jones took the shotgun snap and had an open Theo Johnson and Singletary. He panicked, didn’t set his feet, sailed it over his back’s head and Beanie Bishop picked it off.
It was a miserable play, but should be expected. Again: This is the player Jones has shown to be in all but one of his seasons. And even that year that earned him his highly-scrutinized extension featured a 9-6-1 record, 3,205 passing yards, 15 passing touchdowns and another seven on the ground.
As for that contract: The Giants were right to award him that after that season. They weren’t finding better on the trade market, in free agency and didn’t have the capital to move up in the draft for C.J. Stroud. So they banked on his upside. They hoped he’d continue to evolve with Daboll. It was sound decision-making from Schoen. But that has not happened. So it’s time to move on.
The Giants, technically, tried to do that already. They did everything they could to move up in the draft this year for the No. 3 pick. There, they would have selected UNC’s Drake Maye. Daboll was heard on “Hard Knocks” preaching his desire to go get Jayden Daniels, now a star for the Washington Commanders. When those efforts proved futile, they decided to run it back with Jones.
Despite this being Year 3 in this offense and having more to work with (Nabers) than ever before, Jones appears to have regressed. His arm strength is nothing like early in his career. He routinely misses deep throws. Even his long shot to Slayton on the game’s first possession (a 43-yard gain) is likely a touchdown if he gets it out more. You pair that with the inaccuracies and poor decisions that have plagued his career and you get a deadbeat quarterback this team is going nowhere with.
Daboll saw enough in the Giants’ blowout loss to the Eagles. He benched Jones in the second half looking for a spark. After the game and during the week he stressed that Jones was his quarterback “going forward.”
Pittsburgh was forward in no other sense than the calendar. The Giants are stuck in reverse as long as they keep trotting Jones out as their signal caller.
A change is long overdue.