We expected to be here, but not how we got here.
The lowly Giants outplayed the ascending Buccaneers, in what was supposed to be a showcase of Tom Brady's shiny new NFL arsenal, and probably should’ve won the game. Instead, we are wondering, as we have for about a year, what to do about Daniel Jones, who either kept Big Blue in the game or cost them the game depending on your loyalty to the young passer.
The confounding Giants QB was at it again at MetLife Stadium, dazzling and then dissolving at crucial moments. Which Jones is the one the Giants drafted? Is it the one who threw two astonishing touchdown passes – one to Dion Lewis on a wheel route that landed right in his belly past the goal line, which had to be placed exactly where it was or it would not have worked, and the second a perfect spiral just above the defender's hands in the back of the end zone, which Golden Tate snagged with his fingertips – in huge situations?
Or is Jones the QB who tossed two terrible interceptions, both of which were telegraphed passes where the defender read his eyes perfectly and snagged the ball inside the Tampa Bay 40?
Sadly, for Jones, the answer can't be "both." After the final score, the most crucial stat in any pro football game is turnovers, as they kill drives, blunt momentum, and erase leads. And no matter how impressive Jones is on one play, dancing through the pocket and firing a seed into a wideout's chest, a pick inside the other team's territory can negate all the good he did before it.
Read the stat lines of the best quarterbacks. Even if you ignore the PlayStation stats of Patrick Mahomes - who has turned the NFL into his personal rec league with 21 touchdowns and just one interception – or Aaron Rodgers (20 TD and 2 INT), most of them have at least a four-to-one TD/INT ratio.
Jones? He has thrown seven touchdowns and nine picks, a ratio below even, and that’s seemingly an “upgrade” over his league-leading 18 fumbles last year. Jones was the only NFL player to lose double-digit fumbles in 2019, and while he’s only lost one this year, he’s still at 10 turnovers in eight games, a pace for 20 – again, an improvement over last year, but still way too many.
No doubt the NFL asks more and more of its quarterbacks, most of whom melt under the white-hot pressure of the pocket while processing all the routes and rushers in nanoseconds. That's why so few can do it at a pro level, and even fewer excel at it.
Jones is hardly lighting up the box scores anywhere else, though. He ranks No. 21 in passing yards (1,666), No. 25 in completion percentage (61.8 percent), and No. 28 in passer rating (73.9). We've all seen what his draft class colleague, Kyler Murray, has already done, winning NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2019 after being selected No. 1, and we’ve seen a 2019 second-rounder (Drew Lock) and sixth-rounder (Gardner Minshew) become starters – but we’ve also seen Minshew falter, and fellow first-rounder Dwayne Haskins already benched.
As the No. 6 pick from last year, Jones’ career arc needs to rise sooner than later, become at least closer to Murray or Lock than Minshew or Haskins.
Maybe, and this is being generous, a dozen people on the planet can handle the breakneck speed and pure mayhem of playing quarterback in the NFL. That's why they make the big bucks, and that's why the G-Men have a serious decision to make at the end of this season. Do they stick with Jones, or gamble on someone like Ohio State's Justin Fields, or perhaps even Trevor Lawrence if they get lucky enough? It all depends on which Jones they are really getting, and Big Blue's promising QB has eight games to reshape his potential into a winning product.
Follow Jason Keidel on Twitter: @JasonKeidel
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