Giants WR Darius Slayton Defends QB Daniel Jones Over Deep Ball Decisions

Slayton is tired of people unjustly criticizing his quarterback.

Darius Slayton and Daniel Jones of the Giants during warm-ups prior to the Houston Texans at the New York Giants in a game played at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, on November 13, 2022. / Chris Pedota, NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK

New York Giants receiver Darius Slayton seems to be growing tired of people criticizing quarterback Daniel Jones for every little thing he does or doesn’t do, and says it’s become a case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” for the sixth-year signa caller. 

Such was the case the day after the joint practice with the New York Jets in which there was criticism about Jones and the Giants first-team offense playing it too conservatively with shorter passes and underneath routes rather than trying to air it out.

Slayton, speaking to the Daily News, pointed out that while the Jets might have guarded against the deep ball, the Giants took advantage of what was there.

“They can walk away from yesterday, beat their chests, say they held us to whatever,” Slayton said. “But in a real game, at the end of the day, if they were to play how they did, we would have ran the ball for a bazillion yards and we would’ve won the game. And if they came up, they would’ve gotten beat [deep].”

Slayton raises a good point. A quarterback needs to take what the defense is giving him, and pick and choose when to take his deep shots down the field. Even if the deep ball is there, realistically speaking, an offense probably isn’t going to air it out more than just a small handful of times per game.

“I think there were 323 plays of 40 yards or more last year in all the games. So that accounts for less than one percent of the entire season--0.9 percent exactly,” head coach Brian Daboll told reporters on Thursday.

“So, you have to do a good job of threatening the vertical part of the field. No question about it, but you also have to be able to sustain drives. Anytime you can hit a big one, usually you're going to have an opportunity to get some points on the board. And we've actively been doing that throughout OTAs and camp of pushing the ball down the field.”

While there were times during training camp when the coaching staff encouraged Jones to take some more deep shots than usual, Daboll said it comes down to doing what’s best in any given circumstance.   

“You have to make the right decision when you're playing quarterback,” he said. “So, if they're all playing deep and there's a throw to Wan’Dale (Robinson) where you can gain 15, 18 yards on a run after catch, so be it.”

The Giants receivers are all yards after the catch specialists, but they can also threaten the deep part of the field by creating mismatches. And Daboll, who confirmed he will to call the plays this season, said that’s the ideal scenario on any given Sunday.

 “Definitely threatening the deep part of the field, intermediate, short, horizontal-- that's what you want to do offensively is to try to create as many mismatches as you can, whether it's zone and you flood zones, whether it's man-to-man and you're using different type of plays,” Daboll said, adding, “But trying to attack all areas of the field versus the defense to try to make it as tough on them as you can.” 

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