Giants Country

New York Giants Reader Mailbag: Another Round of Daniel Jones Questions

Let's see what's on the readers' minds this week.

Patricia Traina

New York Giants Mailbag
New York Giants Mailbag / Patricia Traina | New York Giants on SI
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If you'd like to submit a question for the mailbag, please use the link at the bottom of the page to ensure your letter gets to me. You may also post your questions on X (formerly known as Twitter) to @Patricia_Traina, hashtag #askPTrain. Please note that letters may be edited for clarity/length.

In terms of receptions, targets, receiving yards, big plays (20+ yards), and first downs, Malik Nabers leads his peers in all of those categories (35 of 52, 386 yards, 7 big plays, and 19 first downs). He’s fourth in YAC (156). So yeah, I’d say he is top-5 worthy right now. 

 Andrew, I think Jones gets at least half of the season. These last few losses haven’t solely been because of him, but I also don’t necessarily think he’s done anything to help his team rise above the competition. I think if the losses continue to pile up, then they might want to consider a change, as after 5½ years, if they don’t know what they have in him by now, then they’re never going to know. 

My gut feeling is they will move on from him after this year unless he suddenly becomes the reincarnation of Eli Manning in his prime. He has the talent around him, but this continued issue with his accuracy on deep passes (which I will add they’ve been working on since the start of the summer) and an inability to consistently hit receivers in stride is a problem.

Daldo, I don't see Jones being willing to take a pay cut. I think if they are going to move on from him, make a clean break and maybe re-sign Drew Lock or Tommy DeVito as your bridge quarterback.

I’m sure Daniel, if he and the Giants part, will want a chance to be a starter elsewhere. Also even if you offer him a pay cut, you’d have to give him a chance to earn back what you cut through incentives and I’m fairly certain his agent would want LTBEs versus NLTBEs.  

Nice try, Brian, but I'm not doing your history homework for you. LOL!

And we have this related question from Jim P.

In watching Daniel Jones this season, it appears that he is consistently underthrowing receivers on deep balls. Most times, they have to slow down or stop; I don’t recall any passes where they didn’t break stride. This is killing their offense. Do you see it this way?

Kris & Jim, Jones is currently second in YAC among passers (behind Dak Prescott) with 465 YAC, of which Malik Nabers has 156 of that YAC (currently fourth among receivers). In 2022, Jones’s last full season (and best one to date), he ranked 12th among passers in YAC (1,596).

I think his problem is with his accuracy. We’ve seen him underthrowing receivers in games, and in camp, he was overthrowing guys. Jones is ranked 29th out of 31 quarterbacks in accuracy percentage (57.2%), just ahead of Dak Prescott and Anthony Richardson. When a quarterback isn't accurate, any receiver worth his salary will slow down and do what he has to in order to make the catch.

That said, only 9.4% of Jones’s passes fall into the “bad throw” category, which is the second lowest mark among quarterbacks–but I also chalk that up to him not taking as many chances as some of his contemporaries.

Nothing is going on. You can't expect the same level of aggressiveness the defense showed against the Browns to happen every week, nor can you expect the same level of "passiveness," as you put it, shown against Dallas every week.  He will burn you if you blitz the heck out of Dak Prescott. 

If anything, I thought Bowen's game plan this week was balanced. Were there breakdowns? Yes. However, considering the Giants held the Cowboys to 20 points, which should have been good enough to win and which is below their average points scored, I thought the defense was the least of the problems Thursday night. 

It seems like they are not trying to make any plays with Bellinger. He was a decent choice in the red zone in the past. I also think they miss Hodgins, who ran nice medium-range slant patterns, and Jones was comfortable with him. It just seems they have two receivers, and if they are covered, we're sunk. -- Gene F.

Gene, the only logical explanation i can think of to explain why Daniel Bellinger has become an afterthought in the offense is because they view him as more of a blocker.

So far this season, the Giants have run 12-personnel (one running back, two tight ends on almost 30% of their offensive plays (league average is 20.4%) and 13-personnel (one running back, three tight ends) on 4.6% of their plays.

Add that together, and the Giants have run "heavy personnel," which is usually fielded to help with run blocking (a weakness on this team at the moment) on nearly 35% of their personnel alignments.

What happened to our tight ends and Jalin Hyatt? Are there only two weapons in the game? -- Wayne P.

Wayne, I touched on this in the answer above. What I believe to be the case is that they have developed a comfort level with those players to where they're starting to over-rely on them.

And that is a dangerous thing to do. I get wanting to put the ball into your best playmakers' hands, but as I mentioned in this podcast episode, to much reliance on one player is not a good thing because the moment the opponent figures out how to reduce that player's impact or if that player is missing due to injury, then what?

We saw that with OBJ and I'd be concerned we might see that this year. Why not spread the ball out more to others? Maybe you catch the opponent off-guard.

As for Hyatt, he’s zero for three on his pass targets with one drop this year. Last year his 57.5% catch rate was last among the Giatns' four receivers who had at least 30 pass targets and his four drops led that same group.

He had a chance to beat out Darius Slayton this summer and he couldn’t do it. That’s not to suggest that he can’t be a good receiver for this team in the future, but thus far, he hasn’t shown enough production to siphon snaps away from Slayton.

I think people forget that the offense he was part of in Tennessee was limited and that Hyatt had a lot to learn when he got here. He’s still learning, but he works hard at it and wants to be great. But you have to earn those opportunities through consistency, and given the state of this team, can you blame the coaches for sticking with the guys who are more consistent?

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Patricia Traina
PATRICIA TRAINA

Patricia Traina has covered the New York Giants for over three decades for various media outlets. She is the host of the Locked On Giants podcast and the author of "The Big 50: New York Giants: The Men and Moments that Made the New York Giants" (Triumph Books, September 2020). View Patricia's full bio.

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