Giants QB Daniel Jones chooses to swallow any 'Hard' feelings
Daniel Jones of the Giants throws a pass during the third quarter against the Minnesota Vikings at MetLife Stadium on Sunday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
All the disappointment and criticism and booing that has befallen Daniel Jones in the last few days is just something that comes with the job. If nothing else, that aspect of playing quarterback in New York he has a very good handle on.
“I’m not easily offended,” he said on Wednesday, laughing at a question about whether some reactions have crossed a line. “I know how it works.”
He doesn’t pay much attention to what other teams say, either, including some trash talk that came from the Vikings’ locker room after Sunday’s deflating loss in the Giants’ home opener.
“It’s really not important to me,” he said.
So what is important?
“I’ve said a number of times I am concerned about the people in this building,” he said. “I think I have plenty of help, plenty of good coaching, plenty of good teammates to work with here. That’s what I am focused on, the people I trust who I have relationships with and can help me out.”
Here’s the problem with that logic:
We all know exactly what the people in the building think. Because they’ve told us. They told the entire world.
The “Hard Knocks” crew from HBO followed the Giants’ front office this offseason and among the juicy tidbits they captured and aired was a short seemingly insignificant conversation between general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll. The two were discussing the rookie quarterback class in Schoen’s office. Schoen spoke first.
“Daniels,” he said, referring to LSU’s Jayden Daniels. “Have you guys seen enough that you would trade up for him?”
“Daniels?” Daboll replied. “I would.”
Daniels, by the way, no longer plays at LSU. He’s now the starting quarterback for the Commanders, who selected him with the second overall pick. The quarterback for this week’s Giants opponent.
That’s right. If there is anything that sums up the tenure of this regime so far after two and 1/17 seasons together it is this: Daboll goes into a gotta-have-it game for the Giants trying to beat the quarterback he very publicly wanted while trying to fix the quarterback he is stuck with.
They stuck themselves with Jones, of course. They are the ones who chose him over Saquon Barkley, the newly knighted NFC Offensive Player of the Week, to build around. They gave him a four-year $160 million contract. And now they are the ones who seem to be trying to get out from under all of that every time they show up on “Hard Knocks.”
It wasn’t just the episodes about the Giants that exposed their true feelings. In the final episode of the Bears’ training camp run on the show Schoen pops up like a recurring character or a crossover gimmick to chat up Chicago general manager Ryan Poles before the Georgia-Clemson game last month.
“Gotta be nice,” Schoen says to Poles, “not to be looking at the, uh…”
That may be where Schoen realizes Poles is probably wearing a microphone just as he had been during the offseason. No matter. Poles finishes the thought while Schoen laughs uncomfortably.
“Quarterbacks?” says the man who drafted Caleb Williams. “Hopefully it stays that way for a long time.”
Daboll said he spoke with Jones about that Jayden Daniels scene — and presumably all the other ones that involved him and the organization drooling over the incoming crop of Jones’s would-be replacements — several weeks ago after they initially aired.
“You're not excited about it, but they have a job to do,” Jones said shortly after watching those clips on TV and also, it’s important to note, after the team wound up not drafting anyone else at his position. “I’ve got a job to do. We're at this point now, so I'm grateful for the opportunity and excited to play football. That's my focus now. But it's not a fun conversation.”
Daboll brushed past questions about his Daniels desires on Wednesday.
“Our focus right now is on what we're doing in the moment, which is getting ready to play a game,” he said. He was also decidedly less effusive in his talk about Daniels this time around. “I think he's a good football player,” he said. “He's athletic. He's dynamic with the ball in his hands, whether it's a passer or a runner. But again, this is more about the Washington offense in general.
Would be still trade up for him if he could? Would he trade Jones, the sixth-year veteran who played more like a rookie than Daniels and posted one of the worst statistical performances of any quarterback in the league?
Those questions are hypotheticals, of course. No such swaps are going to happen. Given that the Giants and Washington are in the same division, they probably never were, either.
Sunday’s game, though, will go a long way toward shaping how Daboll might answer Schoen if he was asked that same question about Daniels again. It will also give Jones an opportunity to silence, at least for a little while, some of his most vocal critics . . . and not just the ones outside the building.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
