Why Daniel Jones is unlikely to be ready for a Week 1 starting assignment

Yes, Daniel Jones has looked good this preseason. But while he continues to make progress in his transition from college to the NFL, here's why Jones will probably not be ready for a Week 1 starting assignment.

David Kohl-USA TODAY Sports

Giants head coach Pat Shurmur probably wishes at this point he had a tape-recorded message for every time he’s been asked whether he’s contemplating naming rookie quarterback Daniel Jones as the team’s Week 1 starter against Dallas.

“I think what we’re doing is--and I’ve said it all along--Eli (Manning) is our starter and we’re getting Daniel ready to play,” Shurmur said during his conference call with members of the Giants media.

In case the message wasn’t clear--and it apparently wasn’t as someone asked Shurmur if he was simply just not ready to say for sure that Manning would be the team’s Week 1 starter.

“I just said Eli’s the starter,” Shurmur snapped, raising his voice. “Didn’t I just say that?”

Jones’ performance this preseason-- he’s completed 25 of 30 pass attempts for 369 yards, and 2 touchdowns, good for a 140.1 NFL passer rating--certainly has made believers out of the rookie’s harshest critics, who mocked general manager Dave Gettleman for using the team’s sixth overall pick in the draft on a quarterback from Duke who barely won games in college.

It also hasn’t hurt Jones that he’s shown himself to have a thick skin when it comes to criticism, something he first demonstrated when he received the famed Bronx cheer during a visit to Yankee Stadium in the spring, or, more recently, when fellow quarterback Baker Mayfield outwardly expressed disbelief that the Giants would draft a quarterback who wasn’t a winner in college.

Despite having checked off numerous boxes such as displaying pinpoint accuracy, dispelling the myth about his lack of arm strength, and overcoming adversity, Jones is far from being a finished product ready to take the reins of an NFL offense.

During the preseason, Jones has more often than not faced the backups of other teams. What’s more, those teams--the Jets, Bears, and Patriots--are all on the Giants’ 2019 regular-season schedule, which means that the defensive looks they’ve given the Giants have been as vanilla as they come.

In the training camp practices, the Giants have thrown some more complex looks at the rookie in what’s been a controlled environment--one in which he doesn’t have to worry about being smashed in two as he was against the Bengals Thursday night.

At times Jones has looked brilliant in those controlled settings and at others, he’s looked very much like a rookie.

This is all part of Shurmur’s master plan to bring the rookie along at a brisk enough pace to help build confidence and make certain that when the time does come to make the transition from manning to Jones, it’s as seamless as possible.

In its current issue, Inside Football took a look at some of the steps of Jones' development.

For example, the Giants have had Jones work more from the shotgun at the start of the preseason, something he was asked to do a lot of while at Duke. They also didn’t ask him to make a lot of full-field reads in his first two games.

In Week 3, against the Bengals, a team the Giants won’t face in the regular season, Jones’ tasks were expanded to include multiple reads and longer dropbacks plus more snaps from under center.

Jones passed with flying colors, going 9 of 11 for 141 yards (118.8 rating) against the Bengals. But it’s just one game in which he was asked to move to the next level with another game on deck.

When the Giants face the Patriots next week, there’s a pretty good chance that none of the starters on either team will play.

That probably means that Jones is potentially looking at his next test, which is to get through the upcoming week, preparing as the starter.

He could also see extended action which would mean playing into the early third quarter (at this point, do the Giants really need to see any more from Alex Tanney?) before maybe being relieved by Kyle Lauletta.

When the preseason ends, Jones will have come a long way from when he first set foot in the Giants team headquarters.

He will have made significant strides in being ready to step in for Manning at any time (the goal all along) in the event things go astray, so much so that it wouldn’t be surprising if Shurmur decides to keep two quarterbacks on the 53-man roster rather than three.

But for those who think Jones will be a finished product, you might want to, as Shurmur once said, “slow your roll” a bit because there is still some more work let to be done that will continue long after the Giants close the doors of their practices to the media as they do in the regular season.

“I think he’s done a good job in the preseason, as I’ve mentioned all along,” Shurmur said. ‘

“He’s getting better, and he’s going to continue to do that so that at whatever time we need him to play, he’ll be ready.”

Just not for Week 1.