Daniel Jones will need all the help he can get to be successful in year three for the NY Giants.
Daniel Jones is the NY Giants’ most important player this season.
How Jones handles the pressure and adversity of being an NFL QB in the nation’s biggest and toughest market will be a key development for the entire organization for this year and beyond.
Jones has been a bag of mixed results in two years. There’s the dramatic second-half comeback win in his first career start, there’s a 5-touchdown, 350-yard overtime win, along with too many losing games with constant turnovers and bad decisions.
Daniel Jones will need help in order to be successful this year. Football is the ultimate team sport and it takes an entire army of people to win and keep winning.
Here’s a look at the five NY Giants most critical to Daniel Jones’ success in 2021.
#5 NY Giants Most Important to Jones’ Success: Tight Ends Evan Engram & Kyle Rudolph
We start our rankings off here with the NY Giants’ top two tight ends in 2021.
Evan Engram returns for year five in New York and his third season paired with Danny Dimes. Joining him will now be Kyle Rudolph after a long career with the Vikings for the past decade.
Both players will be very important for the NY Giants and their offense.
The Giants like to implement two or more tight ends on the field at the same time with ’12’ and ’13’ personnel groups. Both players will be expected to do a lot in this offense in a variety of roles.
Engram is basically a receiver stuck in a tight end’s body. He plays and runs like a receiver but the Giants still attach him to the line of scrimmage and have him stick his nose and find work in the run blocking department. Kyle Rudolph is a much more natural and well-rounded tight end who looks like and plays like a pure tight end.
The NY Giants will expect both players to help immensely in the passing game as the two seem to complement each other well. Expect Engram to be used in crossing patterns and used vertically up the field more in 2021. Rudolph on the other hand should be a bigger red zone target and a security blanket who can pick up first downs and move the chains.
Nonetheless, both players will be counted on to have huge roles in the offense. They will act as receivers, an extra tackle on the line of scrimmage, and all-purpose threats. The duo of Engram and Rudolph is potent and the Giants can form a legitimate 1-2 punch at tight end this season to bring this offense to life.
#4 NY Giants Most Important to Jones’ Success: Wide Receivers Kenny Golladay & Sterling Shepard
Kenny Golladay and Sterling Shepard will have exponentially high expectations this year.
Golladay has come into New York to be their premier #1 wideout and is being paid equally to the likes of Tyreek Hill and Odell Beckham Jr. There’s no other way around it; the Giants are counting on Golladay and paying him to be an elite receiver in 2021. Golladay led the NFL in receiving touchdowns in 2019 before missing most of 2020 with nagging ailments.
Golladay will be expected to be the big-bodied outside threat the Giants have sorely missed in a long time. Golladay can go up and box out defenders to make plays, he is well-versed in running through and catching in traffic, and he has a knack for making big plays in key moments.
Alongside Golladay, Shepard is the NY Giants’ longest-tenured player, but he has to stay healthy and be a main go-to target for Jones on underneath and short-yardage situations.
Shepard does his best work out of the slot, where he should be full-time now with Golden Tate’s departure.
The NY Giants receiving duo needs to elevate their games immensely this season. The Giants have struggled at receiver since the Odell Beckham trade and it’s time for Shep and Golladay to become the new leaders of the receiver room. These two guys will be two of Daniel Jones’ top targets this year and they need to bring their A+ game each week.
#3 NY Giant Most Important to Jones’ Success: Running Back Saquon Barkley
Saquon Barkley and Daniel Jones are 1A and 1B in the NY Giants’ offense.
These two guys are the two centerpieces of the offense. The team will go as far as Jones takes them, while Barkley is the main option on any given play.
Barkley is the ultimate home run hitter on the offense and his versatility to catch the ball and run is the ultimate threat of this offense. Barkley can turn any ordinary play that should result in five yards into a highlight-reel play that he takes 40 yards longer than he should have.
Jones’ career numbers with Barkley in the lineup is a much more efficient, clean, and turnover-free quarterback. It makes sense as opposing defenses spend so much time focused around and keying on Saquon be it in the backfield or if he lines up out wide or in the slot.
If Barkley stays healthy this year, it opens up the offense immensely and makes Jones’ life that much easier. Having a running back as gifted as Saquon provides endless options for Jones and Barkley to work in shotgun packages and under center. Read-options, play-action rollouts, along with the typical handoffs and screen passes to Saquon will go a long way this year.
#2 NY Giant Most Important to Jones’ Success: Offensive Coordinator Jason Garrett
Jason Garrett will help decide what kind of offense the Giants will be and run in 2021.
Garrett is the Offensive Coordinator, the play-caller, and the architect of the entire Giants’ offense. He brought in a new scheme and playbook to New York with strong principles of the Air Coryell offensive system.
Garrett’s offense failed utterly in 2020. The team sputtered its way to the NFL’s 31st ranked offense, something the Giants never want to be ever again. Garrett struggled with his week-to-week game-planning and schemes, his play calls were very vanilla, and he didn’t truly open up the playbook until too late in the season.
Garrett did not do enough to put his weapons, his offensive line, or his quarterback in a position to succeed last season. Garrett needs to draw up easier concepts that free up receivers or expose the coverage the defense is running (man/zone) through the use of motions and moving guys around pre-snap. Pre-snap motion is the easiest way to create space or make a defense reveal itself, it’s something that should be the bread and butter for Jones and the entire offense.
Garrett will need to be much better this year. He has Saquon Barkley back and his versatility should open the playbook up even more for Daniel Jones. With all the names and pieces on this offense, Jason Garrett must help out Jones and put together a successful, functional, and dynamic offense.
#1 NY Giants Most Important to Jones’ Success: Offensive Tackles Andrew Thomas & Matt Peart
This may be a surprise selection.
However, Andrew Thomas and Matt Peart are arguably the two most players who will be directly responsible for Daniel Jones’ success in 2021 or could be part of his demise in New York. The Giants spent a top-5 pick on Thomas last year before double-dipping with Peart in Round 3. The NY Giants have sky-high expectations for their tackle duo both for now and the immediate future.
For far too long, the offensive line has held back the Giants’ offense. Each season, it appears to be that there is always pressure coming off the EDGE from both sides of the Giants offensive line. The two starting tackles have been huge reasons the Giants have had endless sack issues, turnover problems, and an all-around middling offensive line. The two tackles set the tempo for the entire offense as they set the edge and must protect Daniel Jones quite literally for his dear life.
Thomas and Peart both struggled as rookies. That is expected with any rookie, especially in the trenches where the game is so much different than what they saw in college.
Thomas started 15 of 16 games at left tackle and steadied the position well enough over the last 8 weeks of the season to keep the excitement from his pre-draft status. Thomas went up against numerous star pass rushers such as Aaron Donald, Khalil Mack, DeMarcus Lawrence amongst others. He held his own and did a good job of not giving up ground to savvy, superstar NFL defensive lineman.
Matt Peart came in and did not start which was expected for the raw tackle from UCONN. Peart has the size, intangibles, and quick feet to be a starting NFL right tackle. He only started one game last year but played in 11 games and saw a total of 150 snaps. He showed legit promise in those limited snaps and provided hope for more to come for 2021 and beyond.
Daniel Jones needs to have two bookend tackles to succeed at quarterback. The Giants can’t end up with another miserable pairing such as Ereck Flowers and Bobby Hart. That duo came into the league together as well with Flowers also being a Top-10 drafted tackle and Hart coming in Round 7 in 2015. The duo were both human turnstiles at left and right tackle and was replaced after three disappointing seasons.
Peart and Thomas may be 1A and 1B for most crucial to Daniel Jones’ success this season. If both players develop and take the next step, they will provide much more stability than imagined for this offense and Jones.