As Daniel Jones enters a crucial game against the Commanders on Sunday, Evan Roberts worries that there is a chance that the Giants quarterback is simply beyond repair.
Jones will be trying to prove that he is capable of returning to 2022 form after a disastrous season debut in Week 1, but Evan wonders if the injuries, dreadful offensive line play in front of him last year, and years of noise and pressure around him has simply fractured his ability to be the quarterback he was two years ago, or even at the start of his career.
“One of my concerns after Sunday is that he’s just flat-out broken,” Evan said. “Quarterbacks can be broken. [Tiki] used to tell me that Zach Wilson was broken, and maybe it was the Jets’ fault. Remember David Carr? He was broken! Guys get broken based on things around them. Is Daniel Jones a broken toy right now?”
“His former self was okay. His former self was fine…he was an adequate, smart, growing quarterback, especially in his first year with Brian Daboll. What we saw on Sunday - and this is what scares me about him - was something that was far different. It felt like a broken quarterback, and we have seen broken quarterbacks.”
Tiki isn’t ready to say that Jones is a “broken” quarterback, but after going through the tape of Sunday’s loss to the Vikings, he does see a player that has lost some belief in himself
“I don’t think he’s broken…but he’s lacking confidence,” Tiki said. “He looks unsure of what he’s doing out there sometimes, and everything is just slow…it felt to me like he was just unsure. As a result, throwing a comeback route is just slow when it comes out of his hand.
“It just felt like everything was uncertain to him. And some of that is rust. He got hurt in Week 6 last season…but it’s such an important year for him that he can’t afford to have rust. He can’t afford to be uncertain.”
Tiki believes that is fixable, but Evan is worried that Jones could be past the point of repair, like Zach Wilson at the end of his failed tenure in New York.
“When people are broken,” Evan said. “I don’t know if they can be fixed in the sports sense.”