This seems to be a make or break season for Daniel Jones – so Boomer & Gio had to ask Phil Simms about that in the first edition of the Simms Spotlight, a new feature this year that will see Phil join Boomer & Gregg every Wednesday.
Simple point: does Jones have the intestinal fortitude and personality to understand where he is?
“It’s a good question Boomer, and I think he does understand it, and he’s not shying away from it,” Simms said. “I watched the interview with you guys, and he answered the questions a little carefully, but he still answered them in the right way. Look, if you play quarterback in the NFL and you're in there long enough, you're gonna have stretches where the fans, the media and all that, they're coming after you, and you just got to be tough enough to fight through it and not let it affect you. Easy to say and hard to sometimes, because when it starts going bad, it just gets louder and louder, and you got to block it out.”
Simms pointed to the preseason game in Houston where Jones threw an early Pick-Six as a pivotal moment, because it was a learning opportunity on multiple levels.
“You learn when you're backed up as a quarterback, if they're not open, throw it away, don’t even try to make a play in those situations, which he did and it backfired,” Simms said. “But I thought after that he was very aggressive through the football really well, and that's what you gotta do. When you make mistakes, and you're gonna make them, you just gotta be tough enough to mentally just go, ‘I don’t care,’ and you come to the sideline and when your offensive linemen say it’s okay, tell ‘em ‘I know, be ready to make some tackles because I might throw five today.’”
The only way to block out the pressure is understand it’s coming, and shrug it off.
“Just go out there and do it – if you sit on the bench and think, ‘oh God I already made a mistake, I gotta be careful,’ that's the worst thing you can do,” Simms said. “Bill Parcells would always say it's not a game for perfection, so you gotta go out there and you got to play right to the edge, and you gotta learn where that is so you don't fall off the cliff, and play that way because that's when you're at your best. Hopefully, with Brian Daboll calling the plays, and Daniel Jones knowing what's at stake for him, we're gonna see some of those things in games this year.”