CFB Roundtable: Final Thoughts on Daniel Jones and the NY Giants

I’ve been back and forth in my head about whether or not to write this.  On the one hand, the Giants draft infuriated me so badly that I feel like I have to talk about it, or else I’ll scream.  But then again, everybody and their brother has already written something about the draft.  It’s not clear that the universe needs my particular thoughts.

Part of the reason that I’m actually doing this, and that I’m doing it here, is that we’ve been over this at some length as an As For Football (AFF) staff, and not to put too fine a point on it, but nothing that’s not directly tied to Army Football is really on the menu over there.  We’ve got two sponsors now, and we’re growing, and things are generally pretty great.  However, our audience is a distinctly Army Football audience.  My dream of doing a weekly CFB Roundtable podcast are on indefinite hold, and any coverage of other teams and/or other aspects of the sports are also out at least for the foreseeable future.  My long-term goal for the site is to cover not only Army Football but also the football that Army fans are watching.  But there’s no consensus as to exactly what that means, nor has any of that stuff drawn enough interest to make it worthwhile.  Meanwhile, we need to actively resist taking focus away from stuff that’s actually working.

I’m not sure how to handle it.  Part of me feels like I should just do CFB Roundtable here, and if there’s an audience for it, maybe that will create some kind of opportunity.  We’ll see how it goes as the season progresses.

The Giants Can’t Get Out of Their Own Way

I was fine when New York decided to take Saquon Barkley with the second pick last year.  Because Big Blue’s offensive line has been a shit-show for a half-decade or more, meaning that QB Eli Manning hasn’t had any real chance of success.  No rookie quarterback was gonna come in and succeed behind that line, either.  Last year started a soft rebuild.  But where most teams take their franchise quarterback first, New York started by taking a generational talent at running back while trying to makeover their O-Line from the inside out.

No problem.  From jump, the O-Line looked like a multiyear project, and Manning was already under contract.

Then the Giants traded WR Odell Beckham Jr away along with half their other key playmakers, creating loads of dead money while simultaneously signing older, less talented players to the kinds of big-money deals that they had just refused for the top guys.  That sucked. I mean, it was mind-boggling.  But it at least gave the G-Men plenty of capital for the 2019 NFL Draft.  Which could work, though you can’t reasonably expect to find a talent like Beckham every year in the draft.

But then the Giants took Duke QB Daniel Jones with the sixth overall pick, reportedly after GM Dave Gettleman saw Jones play all of three series at the Senior Bowl, and now I feel like these guys just don’t know what the Hell they are doing.  New York media keeps trotting out this line locally about how “No one saw Daniel Jones play in college because he played at Duke,” but guys, *I* saw Jones play quite a bit, and this pick sucks my ass.

Sometimes I think these sports media guys really don’t watch all that much sports.

Duke is a Power 5 school in the ACC, arguably the second-most successful conference in all of college football.  All of their games were on television.  They beat Northwestern 21-7 last year behind one of the best defenses in the ACC.  This is the same Northwestern team that would go on to beat Ohio State.  Though the Blue Devils struggled down the stretch due to defensive injuries, they started the season with one of college football’s best very run defenses.  Perhaps the biggest reason why Daniel Jones was even in a position to get drafted sixth overall was because LB Joe Giles-Harris played lights out when he was healthy.  This does not make Jones an elite quarterback prospect, but it did give his team a good-enough-looking record to make it appear as if Jones might have done a lot with a lousy supporting cast.  That’s the line NYC sports media’s been peddling, at any rate.

It ain’t true.  The Northwestern game was perhaps the best game that Duke played in 2018.  Jones went 16/22 passing (72.7%) for 192 yards and 3 touchdowns with no interceptions.  Those aren’t bad numbers, but for arguably the best game of a guy’s entire career, I’m not sure they’re elite.  Compare those numbers to what pick #100 Will Grier did with the West Virginia offense against Tennessee just a week earlier—25/34 passing (73.5%) for 429 yards and 5 touchdowns with no interceptions. There’s just no comparison.  Later in the season, Jones went 27/42 passing (64.3%) for 396 yards, 4 touchdowns, and no interceptions against Pitt, but Duke lost that game 54-45 because they let the Panthers rush for a whopping 484 yards on 52 carries (9.3 yards/carry).  It’s worth noting that QB Daniel Jones personally lost a fumble that arguably cost his team the game.  Moreover, Jones didn’t even play in goal-line situations.  Duke played backup Quentin Harris instead; he had 6 carries for 11 yards and 2 touchdowns.

Will Grier never came out of the game.  Not ever.

On the season, Grier went 266/397 passing (67.0%) for 3,864 yards and 37 touchdowns against just 8 interceptions.  Jones went 237/392 passing (60.5%) for 2,674 yards, 22 touchdowns, and 9 interceptions.  So Grier was almost twice as productive as Jones on just five more passes overall, and if you saw Syracuse beat the Hell out of West Virginia in their bowl game without Grier then you already know that this wasn’t because of the supporting cast Grier had at West Virginia.  Will Grier was the whole fucking show.  The Mountaineers were dead without him.  By comparison, Quentin Harris went 12/30 passing for 174 yards, 3 touchdowns, and no interceptions when Jones was hurt, and Duke beat Baylor 40-27.  

* * *

I like what the Dolphins did.  Getting QB Josh Rosen from the Cardinals for a 2nd and next year’s 5th was a master-stroke.  Personally, I think Rosen can play, but even if he can’t, the Fins haven’t exactly lost anything.  Plus, they already have QB Ryan Fitzpatrick under contract.  Miami still needs to rebuild its O-Line, but at least they’ve moving in the right direction.