Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. The Seattle Seahawks made the New York Giants offense look like it should be relegated on its own merits Monday night. Seattle never let the G-Men get on track, recording 11 sacks in an astonishing team defensive performance that left Daniel Jones in tatters. The cherry on top, though, might have been rookie cornerback Devon Witherspoon’s 97-yard pick-six off Jones in the fourth quarter.
The play, as you could guess, featured Jones staring down his receiver. That, in effect, dialed up the game-breaking defensive touchdown for Witherspoon (who also recorded seven tackles and two sacks). You simply can’t let cornerbacks where you want to throw the ball if you want to succeed as a quarterback. It’s one of the cardinal rules of succeeding as a signal caller at the professional level. It’s something Jones still does five years into his NFL career.
After the game, on NFL Gameday Final, Witherspoon was asked about Seattle’s tremendous defensive success and how it managed to turn Jones into a trademark pumpkin. Rather than offer the standard cannon fodder about appreciating his teammates and working hard, Witherspoon almost immediately said, “We knew he [Jones] liked to stare down his first target.”
And he said it so casually, too!
Devon Witherspoon: "We knew he liked to stare down his first target" pic.twitter.com/0VyvcTD3ke
— CJ Fogler account may or may not be notable (@cjzero) October 3, 2023
I don’t want to make this night more about the Giants than the Seahawks, but that little sequence speaks volumes about where New York stands. It has a quarterback — in Year 5, again, mind you — who still can’t make throws beyond his first reads, and he will have a salary cap hit north of $40 and $50 million, respectively, in 2024 and 2025. The Giants are without a paddle, and their quarterback might as well be dead weight on anything they want to do to correct course.
If opponents like Witherspoon are openly blasting Jones in congratulatory interviews, you know it’s time for the Giants to cut bait. This isn’t going to work out with Jones, and it will probably be very painful.