Wide reciever Darius Slayton has long been an ardent, vocal supporter of much-maligned New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones.
In the aftermath of Wednesday’s joint practice with the New York Jets, after which Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner appeared to struggle to find anything nice to say about the Giants’ quarterback and fans appeared to be incredulous about the perceived domination by the Jets’ defense, Slayton was at it again.
Here is Gardner’s odd reaction to a question about Jones:
Sauce Gardner was asked for his opinion of Daniel Jones and his takeaways from practicing against him today: pic.twitter.com/g0tilhnsRZ
— Giants Videos (@SNYGiants) August 21, 2024
Slayton told Pat Leonard of the Daily News that the Jets were sitting “deep every play” to take away down field opportunities. He added that in a real game the Giants “would have ran the ball for a bazillion yards.”
“What do you want DJ to do?” Slayton said. “If DJ threw it up into double coverage, we’d be back on Sportscenter. But, he checks it down and everybody’s like ‘oh man, we couldn’t get anything going today!’ It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
Slayton and Jones came into the NFL together in 2019. It should not be a surprise that Slayton has always had Jones’ back. Jones has had his since the first practice of their rookie minicamp. Slayton had a horrible day, dropping almost everything. Jones picked him up, saying it was on him to give the receiver better balls to catch.
Here is my take on Wednesday. Jones went 13 of 19 by my unofficial count. He completed his first nine passes. Yes, nearly everything was short. There was a nice throw to tight end Theo Johnson on a deep out.
Jones’ day, honestly, would have looked better with more help from Johnson and Malik Nabers. Johnson dropped a pass from Jones when he was wide open running down the middle of the field for what would have been a big gain. Nabers dropped a couple of passes, including a deep throw from midfield that would put the Giants inside the 5-yard line, if not in the end zone, in a two-minute ‘must score a touchdown’ drill.
Make those two plays and the entire day looks better for the Giants’ offense.
Giants coach Brian Daboll had an interesting, in-depth answer on Thursday when asked about the importance of deep throws.
“Well anytime you want to try to attack all areas of the field. I think there were 323 plays of 40 yards or more last year in all the games. So that accounts for less than one percent of the entire season, 0.9 percent exactly,” he said. “So, you have to do a good job of threatening the vertical part of the field. No question about it. But you also have to be able to sustain drives. Anytime you can hit a big one, usually you’re going to have an opportunity to get some points on the board. And we’ve actively been doing that throughout OTAs and camp of pushing the ball down the field. But, again, you have to make the right decision when you’re playing quarterback.
“So, if they’re all playing deep and there’s a throw to Wan’Dale (Robinson) where you can gain 15, 18 yards on a run after catch, so be it. But definitely threatening the deep part of the field, intermediate, short, horizontal, that’s what you want to do offensively is to try to create as many mismatches as you can, whether it’s zone and you flood zones, whether it’s man-to-man and you’re using different type of plays, but trying to attack all areas of the field versus the defense to try to make it as tough on them as you can.”
From my vantage point, Jones made a lot of correct, but unexciting, decisions on Wednesday. He also did not throw a single pass that could have been judged as a turnover-worthy throw. That is something worth noting against an excellent Jets’ defense.
Here is my other take. It is pointless to argue about this stuff. This is practice. We don’t know the context of what was being worked on. As Slayton pointed out, we don’t know exactly how the Giants were being defended, or what the Jets’ objective was. We don’t have film to go back and study the plays from an All-22 perspective.
I remember in 2022 when Jones and the offense looked horrendous most of training camp, but Jones then turned in his best season. We found out later that Daboll and the coaching staff had spent the summer putting Jones in the worst possible situations on purpose, with defenders sometimes even knowing what was coming.
What Jones, or any quarterback, does or does not do in a preseason game or practice gives us all something to write and talk about. In the end, though, the only thing that matters is what happens beginning Sept. 8 against the Minnesota Vikings.
