New York Giants: Deconstructing the Daniel Jones selection

Selecting Daniel Jones conjured up many thoughts for New York Giants fans.

The irony is that some thoughts are good ones for New York Giants rooters, while others are not. Now, when general manager Dave Gettleman says that this kid was at the top of the Big Blue draft board, believe him. Everyone has to understand that under Gettleman, this franchise seeks to turn back the clock, and marches to the beat of its own drummer.

It isn’t business as usual, and time will tell if the veteran NFL executive has remade the franchise, or simply poured more gasoline on this dumpster fire.

Last year, popular wisdom said don’t take a running back with the No. 2 overall selection, and Gettleman said screw that. Heck, the Dallas Cowboys won with Emmett Smith, and successful Big Blue squads had Joe Morris, Rodney Hampton, and Tiki Barber.

Gettleman doesn’t mention that the G-Men also won with Brandon Jacobs (4th Round) and Ahmad Bradshaw (7th Round), as well as free agent Derrick Ward. And Smith plied his craft back in the 1990’s, while so many things in the NFL have changed since then.

Acknowledging change would ruin his narrative, as even the offensive lineman are more athletic these days, than the hog mollies, he often refers to.

Thinking back, older New York Giants fans remember the uproar that George Young made by picking Phil Simms out of Morehead State. It was a mild uproar because the draft wasn’t the made for television docu-drama that it is today.

If that was done today, the reaction would be eerily similar to what Daniel Jones heard on Thursday, plus the social media garbage that comes with almost anything that happens today.

Then in the 1990s, Young grabbed another Duke quarterback, Dave Brown, in the supplemental draft, but his Giants career wasn’t as successful as Simms. Comparing Daniel Jones to either guy is nothing but a fool’s errand.

Spoiler alert: There are a multitude of fools on social media, constantly trolling for anything to gripe about, so nonsensical comparison will undoubtedly be thrust upon us.

My disappointment with the pick is that the New York Giants skipped Kentucky edge rusher Josh Allen in the equation. Gettleman suggested that both players were graded similarly, and we have to take him at his word on that.

Per the team’s official website:

"“First of all, it is legal for guys to have the same grade. So when we set up our horizontal, they were on the same line.”"

It wouldn’t be the first time the Giants draft board failed us.

When it comes to the Jones versus Dwayne Haskins great quarterback debate, logic actually falls in favor of Gettleman. Haskins was not only bypassed by the New York Giants, quarterback hungry teams like the Miami Dolphins, Denver Broncos, and Cincinnati Bengals said no thanks to the former Ohio State Buckeye.

Denver went so far as to trade out of their No. 10 selection, which gives anyone with two eyes and a brain an idea that Haskins wasn’t nearly the best player available on many draft boards, as he fell to the Washington Redskins at pick No. 15.

And if you’re ESPN’s Max Kellerman, trying your best to compare and contrast Jones and Haskins, save your simplistic stat comparison.

Playing Rutgers has all the difficulty of the Red-White game in Columbus. Actually, check that, the Ohio State spring game may be more difficult. Truthfully, predicting quarterback success based strictly upon college success, is scouting for dummies.

I’m not ready to predict how Jones will do, at least until we see him in live game action. And my concern with the pick has more to do with who was bypassed, rather than who was selected. Quarterbacks have a high failure rate in the NFL, just ask the New York Jets, so Haskins or Jones could succeed or fail, and it wouldn’t surprise me.

The reality is that Gettleman can’t hide from this pick, as two yard sticks appear instantly – Josh Allen and Sam Darnold. Thankfully, both reside in the AFC, and with Allen in Jacksonville, he may not be a constant reminder of what went wrong.

The most reasonable thing for anyone to do is to see how it all turns out. If Allen becomes an NFL beast, and Darnold makes the playoffs, we still have to see what kind of player Jones turns into. First and foremost, the selection has to stand on its own merit.

If it fails that test, then the Allen/Darnold comparisons will just pile on an acknowledged failure. Clearly, however, Gettleman has perched himself out on a limb, and some people have already begun sawing.