It is quarterback season in sports, starting right now, about to be in full swing. The NFL Combine is coming up, and that is just the start of it, culminating with when the big fun starts at the NFL draft, and we find out where hot kids like Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye end up after the Bears inevitably take Caleb Williams with the first overall pick.
The Commanders need a quarterback. The Patriots need one, but might not draft one because they’re so far away from being relevant again. The Steelers need a quarterback. The Falcons need one. So, too, do the Raiders.
And you know who else needs a quarterback? The Giants need a quarterback, unless you’ve seen something from Daniel Jones’ complete body of work that the rest of us haven’t. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but the Giants need to make a decision about whether Jones is ever going to be a guy — or The Guy — to ever put them back on top. I grew up a Giants’ fan, and have tried to make myself believe Jones actually could be that guy. Then I saw what everybody saw last season before he was hurt, again.
Should the Giants do everything possible to move up and take whomever is left out of the big three — Williams, Daniels, Maye — after the Commanders have selected one of them? They should. Will they? Probably not. It means that they are about to invest a sixth season in Jones, whom they once took at No. 6, which is where they are again this time. It also means that MetLife Stadium, home to two famous teams with “New York” in their names, continues to be just about the most quarterback-challenged place on the planet.
We know Jones threw 24 touchdown passes as a rookie. We all saw his upside when he played the game of his life against the Vikings in the playoffs. That game got him paid, boy did it ever. But it came at the end of a season when Jones threw a grand total of 15 touchdown passes. You know who throws for at least 15 touchdown passes in the modern NFL? Just about everybody.
Jones also threw for just over 3,200 yards in 2022. You know who had the same numbers last year in the NFL? Gardner Minshew. He threw 15 touchdown passes for the Colts after he had to replace the injured Anthony Richardson. He threw for 3,300 yards. Tyrod Taylor, who stepped in for Jones last season after Jones was hurt again, threw 17 touchdown passes for the Bills back in 2016 when he was their starter, and 3,023 yards. So Taylor had the same stats that Jones had right before the Giants were willing to pay him more than $160 million for four years.
Dave Gettleman drafted Jones out of Duke because he thought he was getting another Eli Manning. Jones even looked the part. Now he has started 59 games for the Giants in his career and thrown a total of 62 touchdown passes. We always hear that the kid just never gets enough help. Well, in his money year, the one that got him paid, he sure got plenty of help from Saquon Barkley, who gained 1,312 rushing yards that year, scored 10 rushing touchdowns, and also caught 57 passes.
You do wonder how many more years Jones gets to show that he can be a marquee player on a marquee franchise, which the Giants still are. You wonder when half-a-decade becomes a full decade as they continue to justify Gettleman’s pick, and their own stubbornness not to have been wrong about Jones.
Seriously? What Giants fan out there, even the ones still loving themselves some Daniel Jones, didn’t watch Taylor last season before he got hurt, when the ball was coming out of his hand and he was extending plays and even going deep, and wonder what the Giants might have looked like if Taylor had stayed healthy once Brian Daboll had to give him the ball. Daboll even won a few games with Tommy DeVito, a career backup at best.
Now here are the Giants, once again a franchise in some trouble, after that first shining season under Joe Schoen and Daboll; in enough trouble to have people speculating what might happen if they get off to a bad start next fall. It’s why between now and the draft, Schoen and Daboll and John Mara and Steve Tisch have to ask themselves if they still see Jones as the future, or a nice kid who turned into an expensive mistake.
That is the Giants’ quarterback situation. And our Jets? They aren’t just invested in Aaron Rodgers, a quarterback who will turn 41 next December and will be coming off the torn Achilles tendon, which merely left them defenseless, and without a real backup quarterback, four offensive plays into their season.
You don’t think MetLife is the most quarterback-challenged place in all of pro football? Show me another team like the Jets that within one rather amazing three-year period were wrong with the quarterback they took third overall (Sam Darnold) and then wrong with the quarterback they took second overall (Zach Wilson). But then, why would anybody be surprised about that, especially looking at the quarterbacks they ran through MetLife between Mark Sanchez (who actually took them to two straight AFC title games) and Rodgers:
Geno Smith, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Josh McCown, Darnold, Bryce Petty, Mike Vick, Wilson, Mike White, Joe Flacco, Trevor Siemian, Tim Boyle. I may have forgotten a few others, or simply blocked them from my memory.
For now, the Jets have their guy in Rodgers. The Giants remain committed to Jones, at least for now. Could the Bears turn out to be wrong about Williams, despite what we saw from him at USC? Sure they could. Jared Goff is doing some job for the Lions now, but the Rams gave up on him, despite taking him with the first overall pick once. Carson Wentz went No. 2 behind Goff and the Eagles gave up on Wentz, and now he can’t even keep a backup job.
The Cowboys stick with Dak Prescott, who is 30 now, about to enter his 9th season, and yet to sniff a Super Bowl. You wonder if the Giants are going to be in the same boat with Jones in a few years. The Packers finally moved on from Rodgers, and happily, because they had Jordan Love waiting in the wings. You know who might be playing in the next Super Bowl? Him.
Picking the right quarterback is the day trading of sports. Ask the Giants, who thought they were going to hit big with Jones the way they did with Eli. Better yet, ask the Jets. Oh, sure. The year the Chiefs took Patrick Mahomes at No. 10, the Jets took Jamal Adams four picks ahead of him.
MEMORY OF THE MIRACLE IN LAKE PLACID LIVES ON, JALEN IS AS VALUABLE AS THEY GET & RED SOX GIVING UP …
Once more this week, 44 years later, it was a Friday night in Lake Placid, at a little Olympic arena on Main Street, when a bunch of American hockey kids coached by Herb Brooks played the most famous game any team has ever played in this country, in any sport.
I was lucky enough to be there, covering it for this newspaper.
I was there to see Michael Eruzione put one behind a backup goalie named Vladimir Myshkin with 10 minutes left in that game, straight up, and I promise you that after that it was as if those 10 minutes took 10 years to play out.
It was all ridiculously exciting, as what became known as the Miracle on Ice played out, as Brooks’ kids kept skating with what had been the best hockey team in the world — kept out-skating them really — as Jim Craig refused to let the Soviets put another puck behind him.
And then — and even though those of us in the arena wouldn’t find out until later — the great Al Michaels made the greatest sports call of them all, asking the whole world if it believed in miracles.
Later on, when it was over, and my column had been written, I walked around the streets of Lake Placid, with snow falling, the whole town like a movie set, and watched as groups of Americans stopped on street corners and outside bars and began to sing “God Bless America.”
I have been lucky enough to have a ringside seat at so many unforgettable sports moments from the time I first began writing a column for the Daily News.
Never a night like that.
I keep thinking that if I turn on my television, Tony Romo will still be walking all over Jim Nantz’s call at the end of the Super Bowl.
It’s always tons of fun for sports fans when they hear the people in charge of their team talking about a season other than the one their team is about to play.
Hey, we’re talking about you, Uncle Steve.
Tell me which player in the NBA has been more valuable to his team than Jalen Brunson has been to the Knicks.
I compared the NBA All-Star Game to flag football at the Pro Bowl the other day, and I’d like to apologize to flag football.
Compared to what we witnessed in Indianapolis last Sunday night, baseball’s All-Star Game is like church.
Just putting on pinstripes doesn’t change how badly Alex Verdugo behaved in Boston last season.
And how happy Alex Cora was to see him go.
Incidentally: The Red Sox, as an organization, now look like the biggest give-up job in all of baseball.
They’ve got an owner in John Henry who seems far more interested in his Liverpool soccer team and his investment in pro golf than he does the Sox.
Who are starting to make 2018 seem like as distant a memory as 1918 once was.
