The New York Giants pulled off the biggest surprise of the 2019 NFL Draft when they swung hard for the fences and plucked a quarterback most pundits rated as the fourth-best passer among this year’s crop out of the ether with the sixth-overall pick. Duke standout Daniel Jones, a zero-time All-ACC honoree, is the franchise’s latest player to wear the title of Eli Manning’s heir apparent. He’s the latest link in a Giants’ draft chain that includes names like Kyle Lauletta, Davis Webb, and Ryan Nassib.
All the ways the Giants have tried to explain away their much-criticized Daniel Jones pick
From “he was our top guy” to the fragility of human life defense.
General manager Dave Gettleman landed on Jones after eschewing the idea of drafting other passers like Ohio State’s Dwayne Haskins and Missouri’s Drew Lock or drafting defensive help like Kentucky’s Josh Allen or Houston’s Ed Oliver. It wasn’t a choice fans appreciated.
The New York media was expectedly unconvinced as well.
But the Giants are doing their damnedest to justify spending their first of two first-round picks on a player who finished his breakout senior season with a success rate of just 39.6 percent. Gettleman and the New York social media team worked overtime to tweet through the vitriol coming their way from fans, critics, and pundits alike. And pretty much everything they said about their new quarterback was ridiculous in some way.
How ridiculous? Well, here are the seven most egregious ways the Giants tried to justify the most criticized pick of the 2019 NFL Draft.
7. By immediately referring to Jones as an “icon”
Wait, no. That’s just the Giants being bad at titling videos for Google indexing.
6. By suggesting Jones was equally as talented as Josh Allen, who was still on the board
New York badly needed an edge-rushing presence for 2019, especially after trading Olivier Vernon to the Browns. Fate shined on the franchise when Allen, a talented defensive end and linebacker from Kentucky, slid from a projected spot in the top five picks to No. 6. But when push came to shove, quarterback was the bigger need than a defensive standout, and Allen had failed to separate himself from Jones in the team’s eyes.
This grading system does not track. Not a single pre-draft big board from across the sea of draft experts had Allen and Jones in the same time zone.
Jones vs. Allen, notable pre-draft big boards
Big board rankings | Mel Kiper | Todd McShay | Dan Kadar | Chris Trapasso | Vinnie Iyer | The Draft Network |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Daniel Jones | 23 | 59 | 73 | 82 | 38 | 71 |
| Josh Allen | 4 | 5 | 3 | 22 | 2 | 9 |
5. By having Charley Casserly come to his defense
Daniel Jones is the most pro-ready quarterback in this year’s draft ... He’s a touch guy and an accurate passer, but he also has the ability to move in the pocket.
His percentage is like a meteorologist. He has no relationship to this team. I’d say less than zero. Based on what? He’s never at a practice, never at a game. ... At least he put his name on it, which is more than a lot of guys. But, like he usually is, he was 100 percent wrong.
4. But he did well in this one exhibition game!
The Senior Bowl gives scouts an opportunity to see some of college football’s best players match up against their peers for a week of practices led by former NFL coaches. It’s a useful tool to gauge a prospect’s readiness, and it’s also where Jones overcame an unimpressive week of practice and showed out in a big way to win MVP honors.
But one week of solid performances shouldn’t supersede a season of middling-to-bad performances against good defenses, and New York should know that better than anyone. 2019 marked the third straight year the Giants drafted the Senior Bowl MVP. All three — Jones, Kyle Lauletta, and Davis Webb — have been quarterbacks.
The fact they’ve had to go back to this well three straight times should tell you how meaningless that honor is. But Gettleman was convinced anyway, and it didn’t take long at all.
Three. Whole. Series.
3. By having the guy they drafted after Jones say nice things about him
The Giants took Dexter Lawrence — a talented defensive lineman, but also not really a pass rusher — with the No. 17 pick. He was unsurprisingly complimentary of his new teammate:
This is amazing, because Jones was so, so bad in his lone college appearance against Clemson. He needed 43 passes to throw for 158 yards and zero touchdowns. He officially ran the ball 12 times for seven yards and was sacked four times, and was neither particularly fast nor accurate.
2. He mostly looked like an NFL quarterback at the combine!
New York’s poor social media director, having likely muted all mentions at this point, just sorta gave up with this tweet. “Jones” needs an apostrophe, and the text of the tweet itself is as minimally descriptive as possible. If someone sent this to you as an email, you’d delete it assuming it was a virus.
And Jones was ... fine at the combine. He didn’t put up mind-blowing numbers. He ran a relatively quick 4.82-second 40-yard dash. He threw well. He didn’t show any major red flags — he just didn’t look like the No. 6-overall pick, either.
1. Nihilism
Life is meaningless and we could die any second. Gettleman understands this. Drafting Jones was his one shot to change the world before being snuffed out of existence by a runaway automobile. Life’s too short to draft Dwayne Haskins.
Jones could sit for three years behind a 40-year-old Eli Manning. You could get hit by a car. It’s 50/50 either way, really. When you’re long gone, you just want to be sure the world remembers you as the guy who drafted the quarterback who piloted Duke to eight wins in 2018.
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