Is He Worth It? – Daniel Jones

Daniel Jones had a very strange year in 2022. He got to the playoffs-a career first-and torched the Vikings with both his arm and his legs. Then, he got to the Eagles, and the results were…a bit less than impressive.

In fact, the New York Giants got absolutely walloped by a score of 38-7. Some of the moments from the loss were a far cry from Jones’s game against the Vikings. On a play that would normally result in Jones’s scrambling abilities, he instead tripped, failing to break out of one lineman’s arms.

On the very next play, Jones was pressured by five linemen, couldn’t get his eyes off of one side of the field, and completely lost his focus on the extra pressure coming at him as he pumped the ball wildly while taking a sack on 4th and 8 at midfield.

How did this game happen immediately after a game where Jones was timed, polished, mobile, and earned the nickname Vanilla Vick? And why did Jones get a four year, 160 million dollar deal immediately after the playoffs, making him the 8th most paid quarterback in the NFL?

Daniel Jones was the quarterback that inspired me to start a brand new series, entitled Is He Worth It?. I will examine, one by one, quarterbacks that we consider overpaid, and judge why it is that teams decided to make them millionaires.

The format will be a little unorthodox, but I hope it will function well for this voyage. Essentially, I will reverse the format by which evaluators traditionally examine individual quarterbacks. I will start by examining their flaws, detailing why a quarterback is considered “overrated”, or flawed.

After this, I will play devil’s advocate, and defend them for being paid like they are. Finally, I will give an overall analysis of where exactly they deserve to be paid among NFL quarterbacks, and whether they are above or below this mark.

The answers are surprisingly enlightening. With Jones in particular, I learned a lot about the scarcity of certain features of his game. For all of his downsides, Jones presents a lot of legitimate, top-of-the-league level mobility and football IQ, and in his first year under Brian Daboll, massively cut down on his turnovers from a year ago.

So for the first installment of Is He Worth It?, I will take a look at a player that no one outside of the east coast wanted to get rich.

There is one key reason why Jones consistently holds himself back on film: His anticipatory throwing skills are extremely lacking.

By anticipatory throwing, I mean throws where a receiver isn’t obviously open, where the quarterback either has to lead them to a spot, or can anticipate them getting to the spot where he throws the ball.

An example of this is a 1st and 10 play against the Cowboys in Week 3, early in the 1st quarter. Jones comes out from under center, after play-faking to Saquon Barkley in singleback, and nothing initially comes open.

Rather than immediately take his eyes down to both flats on either side, however, Jones ends up patting the ball, while forcing his eyes to wait until something pries open downfield. This allows a lineman off the edge to sneak on him from behind and plant him for an enormous sack.

This is an example of Jones not throwing with anticipation. Jones has two options other than taking the sack: He can either anticipate the fact that he has an out on the left side of the field where, if he throws it quickly enough, will be open and under the 3-defender zone shell.

Or, he can quickly throw out and away to either flat route-both of which are manned up.

Instead, Jones hesitates, waiting for either the out or something else to come open way downfield, and ends up getting punished for it. It is this lack of predicting and anticipating what can happen when he doesn’t explicitly see it that often gets Jones killed.

This can even lead to situations where Jones will think about scrambling while out of the pocket, but will have just enough of a pause in his decision making where he takes a sack, or gets tackled for loss.

On a 1st and 10 play in the second quarter of the same game, Jones is operating out of the gun, and has another zone coverage where he needs to figure out which window to throw into. To Jones’ credit, he moves up in the pocket to extend the play.

What Jones realizes too late, however, is that there is a potential running lane that has opened up to his right, if he can cut around the linebacker in coverage. As I will discuss later, Jones does not have DB speed, but he does have enough speed to get at least a solid gain if he takes off here.

Instead, we get a similar patting of the ball, only while on the move. This opens him up to a tackle from both the linebacker, and a DL that gets off his block. While you can say that the DL also did a very nice job on this play-and he did-this is also partly the result of brief hesitation from Jones.

It is mistakes like these where Jones’s processing of the game slows down that generate his main overrated factor: He is often a hair too slow to make a decision. You pay quarterbacks to fit tight windows very quickly, and make very fast decisions under duress. Jones has too many plays where he doesn’t clearly see the solution, and he hesitates just enough where a good play is killed, or a bad play is made worse.

Devil’s advocate

Daniel Jones is more mobile than 90 percent of quarterbacks in the NFC. There. I said it.

Anytime you do not account for Jones’s legs, you will get torched. There are runs where he is not only fast, he is big enough to dodge tackles that normally bring a moving quarterback down.

The play is 2nd and goal against the Colts, with 11:57 left. Jones catches the defense in single high man coverage, with a linebacker that should be on him out of position. Jones runs fast and far enough to get to the end zone before he catches up and tries to knock him out of bounds.

While Jones could have slid here to not take the hit, he shows enough speed to beat first-level coverage defenders consistently. The other thing that Jones impresses you with is his decision making regarding when to run.

When Jones does run, it’s calculated, and it’s extremely athletic and precise. During the wild card round of the playoffs, it was the soft, shell-based defense of the Vikings that let him show this off the most.

On 2nd and 7 against Minnesota, with 12:22 left in the 1st half, Jones is facing a unique coverage from the Vikings. Both of their linebackers run to cover either flat, while the DBs drop into a variant of Cover 2, after disguising a base 4-3 defense.

Jordan Hicks, because of his assignment, gets jostled out of the middle of the field, despite being the only defender assigned to this region. Call it a schematic flaw from Donatell, but it lets Jones show off exactly how mobile he is: He promptly takes off, and speeds past Hicks and every other defender in intermediate range, before expertly sliding down for a chunk play.

Jones can also use this same mobility to extend plays in the passing game. On 1st and 10 against the Eagles in the Divisional, with 1:04 left, Jones is presented with seven defenders in zone coverage. For some reason, Daboll doesn’t call an easy throw to the middle of the field, and Jones is left to run around waiting for something to unfold.

Jones is able to flush himself far to the boundary side and let the ball loose right before he gets out of bounds, resulting in a catch by Matt Breida of all people. Jones shows both his mobility on this play, as well as an ability to react to openings in extremely tough situations for his offense.

One last thing that I will note. The offense, at first glance, appears to be surprisingly conservative. Many of the Giants’ opening scripts on film, when they aren’t playing a team like the Vikings, consist of extremely easy plays; naked boots, 2 read play action, screens to Saquon Barkley and the like.

This is a fair point, until you witness drops like this one: 3rd and 14, and Golladay comes wide open on a Hitch Route. Jones knows he immediately has it, and plants and throws with a 5 step drop, in rhythm. And oh, by the way, it’s a deep quarters shell. Easy.

Except Golladay drops it mid-break.

It was receiver play like this that plagued the Giants all year. They were young, they dropped passes, there were injury issues, and so many things went wrong that the offensive design couldn’t make them do much. While Jones’s lack of anticipatory abilities might have been a variable, the receiver play was likely the primary reason.

Final evaluation

Contract Grade: B-

Player Grade: B

Daniel Jones is a good quarterback who deserves to be paid anywhere from the 11th to 20th most in the league.

I think that the reason for the Giants overdoing it with his contract has to do with both his mobility, which is arguably tied with Kyler Murray for the second-best in the NFC behind Jalen Hurts, and the fact that he often made do with a weak receiver cast.

Jones is the perfect barometer for why paying quarterbacks is just as much about scarcity as it is about the talent of the player. Sure, Jones isn’t technically a top 10 quarterback in the NFL. There are anywhere from 10-12 quarterbacks who are better than him at throwing into tight windows with anticipation-not just the elite players, but players like Dak Prescott and Kirk Cousins.

But the traits that Jones brings in terms of athleticism, throwing accuracy, and the ability to not waver in difficult situations, make it extremely difficult to say no to an extension. So I will be fairly nice with my final grade for Jones’s contract.