New York Giants fans have a familiar kind of bad-luck viewing experience on their hands: the franchise they know so well is getting solid quarterback play, while Daniel Jones is back in the middle of another rough stretch somewhere else.
The Giants, despite Jaxson Dart being out for the season, have gotten wins with Jameis Winston and most recently J.J. McCarthy.
That alone makes this a strange sight for a fan base used to scraping by at the position since Eli Manning retired after the 2019 season. But the other half of the story is even more recognizable: Jones, after leaving New York, is sliding again.
The Indianapolis Colts handed Jones a two-year, $88 million deal after he convinced them he was their quarterback for the foreseeable future. So far, that bet is looking painfully shaky.
On Sunday, the Colts fell 16-10 to the Minnesota Vikings and dropped to 2-4, with Jones getting swallowed up by a defense that blitzed him on 85.2 percent of his dropbacks, according to NFL Next Gen Stats. He finished with 108 passing yards and 13 completions.
That was always going to be a brutal assignment against Minnesota’s defense, but the bigger problem is that Jones’ season as a whole has been a mess. Through seven games, he has thrown for 1,398 yards, four touchdowns and seven interceptions while completing 59.6 percent of his passes. That completion rate is especially telling, since Jones had never been below 60.0 before.
Still, Colts coach Shane Steichen is not budging. Even with the team headed toward what looks like a major shake-up, Steichen is sticking with Jones at quarterback. He doubled down after the game and again on Monday.
"He's proven that he can do it. So that's where the confidence comes from.
And we need to get him back playing to that level that he was last year. It's taking a little bit longer," said Steichen, h/t ESPN's Stephen Holder.
Steichen is betting that Jones can rediscover the form he showed before tearing his Achilles. Last season, in 13 games, Jones threw for 3,101 yards, 19 touchdowns and eight interceptions while completing 68.0 percent of his passes. Reaching that level again looks like a steep ask.
Giants fans have seen this movie before. Pat Shurmur believed in Jones during his rookie year, Joe Judge kept leaning on him after that, and Brian Daboll did too before pulling the plug early in the 2024 season, which led to Jones’ release. New York now appears to have its future in Dart, with McCarthy and Winston providing strong depth behind him.
Indianapolis, meanwhile, has Anthony Richardson and Riley Leonard as two young quarterback options waiting in the wings. If the losses keep coming, Steichen may eventually have to move on from the Jones plan and give one of them a real chance.
The Colts are spiraling, and their roster could get thinner if the front office decides to trade away talent and chase draft picks. But the lesson of Daniel Jones is already sitting there for anyone willing to see it: coaches keep betting on him, and it usually turns costly.
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Tomlinson is the type of target that makes sense for a team trying to thread the needle. A low-cost deal would let the Giants bolster a position group that could use more depth, and his recent play suggests he still has something to offer inside. The question now is whether New York decides to lean into that kind of pragmatic help, or whether it prefers to hold its cards and see how far the current group can carry the defense. [Read more 🡒]