There’s a silver lining, albeit a small one, to Daniel Jones‘ ineffective day in the Giants’ 28-3 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles: He’ll still have a chance to redeem himself.
Nothing went right for Jones, whose offense spent most of the day stuck in the mud before his fourth-quarter benching, at which point the quarterback had thrown for just 99 yards on 14-of-21 passing as the G-Men trailed by 25 points.
Despite the struggles, though, New York head coach Brian Daboll told reporters early on in his postgame news conference that Jones remains his guy.
“Made a change in the fourth quarter when it was 28-3, we had 100 yards, just to create a spark,” Daboll said of the switch to Drew Lock. “Daniel will be the quarterback going forward. But obviously we didn’t do enough offensively. Hardly had any yards. No points.”
The Giants offense did actually get three on the board right before halftime, but was otherwise stymied and shut out by a swarming Eagles defense.
And although Jones certainly carries some of the burden for the team’s anemic outing, little else went right around him. With left tackle Andrew Thomas out for the season following Lisfranc surgery, Big Blue’s ground game had nothing going. Outside of QB scrambles, New York gained just 43 yards on the ground, as Tyrone Tracy Jr. led the way with 23 yards.
Jones found himself constantly under duress and took six sacks, but he also failed to hit the big plays that occasionally became available to him. Even wideout Malik Nabers‘ return from a two-game absence couldn’t kickstart things; the rookie led the club in receiving with 41 yards on four catches.
Asked what makes him think Jones is capable of creating explosive plays when he’s failed to do so for the past couple of years, Daboll — as the Giants did for most of the day — somewhat punted the question.
“We have some guys around him that can create explosive plays,” he said. “We’ll just go back to the drawing board and do the very best we can to try to improve that area. For two weeks in a row, but it’s been a little bit longer than that, we haven’t created ’em. And we need to.”
Still, New York didn’t turn things around given multiple drives sans Jones, instead finding similar struggles behind Lock against an Eagles squad that had eased off the throttle with a 25-point lead.
Jones had eight of his nine drives, which went for a total of 94 net yards, end in punts.
On Lock’s three drives (excluding running out the clock on a fourth), New York added just 13 more net yards and three more punts, and the backup QB also fumbled twice.
It was the type of game the Giants will want to throw away to get back on track, and that’s what they’ll aim to do with Jones leading the way.
“I’m just going to continue to prepare and try to play as well as I can,” Jones told reporters. “Daboll, it’s his team, and up to him to make those decisions. Obviously I believe in myself and believe in this offense, so I’m just going to focus on myself.”
The Giants next play at the Pittsburgh Steelers on Oct. 28 on Monday Night Football.
