The New York Giants weren’t supposed to be good in 2022. Their season-long win total at sportsbooks across the country topped out at seven despite a tissue-soft schedule. This fall was meant to be an audition season for a depleted roster waiting out the final season of quarterback Daniel Jones’ rookie contract.
Instead, the Giants have the second-best record in the NFC. Their 4-1 resume includes wins over the reigning top seeds from each conference. On Sunday, they stormed back from a 17-3 deficit to topple the Green Bay Packers, 27-22, in London.
Jones, with a major assist from tailback Saquon Barkley, has been a driving force behind this unexpected revival. Sunday, the embattled former top 10 draft pick — a sigil of the Dave Gettleman regime that produced 19 wins and zero winning seasons in four years — rose to the occasion despite a depleted roster. After years of his team winning games in spite of him, Jones engineered a comeback where he was the star around which his offense revolved.
Over the course of four drives between the end of the first half and into the second, Jones guided his team from a 14-point deficit to a seven-point lead. In that stretch, he completed 17 of 19 passes for 172 yards despite a punishing Packer pass rush that battered him in the pocket. He converted six of seven third downs, including third-and-13 and third-and-nine. He was the stabilizing, R-E-L-A-X-ing presence you expected behind center for the Packers, not the Giants.
Jones made due with what he had. A depleted depth chart meant he had to lean heavily on Darius Slayton as his top wideout — a player who was reportedly on the chopping block late in the preseason. Those two combined for six catches and 79 yards on seven targets, giving New York the steady receiving presence Sterling Shepard vacated thanks to a torn ACL and Kenny Golladay has failed to provide as a Giant.
Head coach Brian Daboll used Barkley’s presence in the backfield to unleash a string of play-action passes. This took advantage of Jones’ ability to move in the pocket but, more importantly, helped back off a Green Bay pass rush that ranked in the top 10 in both sacks and pressure rate over the first four weeks of the season. The Packers sacked Jones three times, but two were overturned thanks to defensive holding penalties. Rashan Gary was held without a sack or quarterback hit for the first time in 2022.
This strategy was put to the test late when Barkley left for multiple series due to an upper body injury. The play-fakes continued, but Green Bay’s respect for them did not. To counter this, Daboll leaned on his quarterback to use his legs on designed roll-outs. Here’s a little bit of the old-school waggle offense shining en route to a game-tying touchdown:
This was impressive, even if it wasn’t exactly bound for Sportscenter. Jones took what the Packers gave him and, most importantly, didn’t implode under pressure. He now has just three turnovers in five games after committing 27 across 25 games in 2020 and 2020.
This is the story of Jones’ road to 4-1. In London his average pass only traveled 5.3 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. He only attempted two throws that covered more than 15 yards and missed them both. But he completed 18 of his 19 passes 0-15 yards downfield. It was the difference between a win and a loss.
The Giants are 4-1 and have the inside track to a playoff spot in a chaotic, weak NFC. They’ve done this despite a quarterback who has attempted six deep balls in five games and completed one of them. So, uh, what should New York do from here?
There’s recent precedent when it comes to a highly-drafted quarterback spinning a lame duck year into success. We saw Blake Bortles turn what was supposed to be his Jacksonville finale into a spot in the AFC title game with the Jaguars in 2017. Like Jones, Bortles didn’t put up big numbers that season; his 240 passing yards per game and 21 touchdowns were fewer than he’d had in either of the two seasons that preceded it.
But Bortles cut his turnover rate to a career low, Jags offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett bludgeoned opponents with a bruising, if inefficient running attack (527 carries in 16 games) and a swarming defense took care of the rest. With no other option than to try and run it back, Jacksonville signed him to a three-year, $54 million deal that offseason that effectively amounted to a one year tryout and $26.5 million guaranteed.
It didn’t work out — Bortles went 3-9 that fall and attempted only two NFL passes after 2018 before quietly retiring last week — but the Jags had to try. That failure eventually set the team up to draft Trevor Lawrence, though that took several years to pan out.
Armed with competent coaching and a soft schedule, New York will likely sling itself out of prime draft position for any of 2023’s top college passers. There probably won’t be an upgrade available in the free agent market. Like the Jags and Bortles five years ago, Jones could be the best option to carry this team’s momentum into the future.
Of course, there’s little to show an extra year of Jones would prove much. He’s been steady and strong in 2022 but he’s not shredding teams through the air. He’s got Daboll, the former Bills offensive coordinator who unlocked Josh Allen’s potential, but he’s not making Josh Allen plays downfield. He’s simply executing a system well.
Well enough to go 4-1 and well enough to point the Giants toward their first postseason berth since Ben McAdoo was head coach. Jones may not be the franchise’s savior, but he’s made New York good enough to potentially make himself the team’s best option in 2023. That’ll be worth a much larger contract next spring than we’d expected — even if it’s a rubber band tether to a franchise that might be better without him in the long run.