New York Giants: Signs point to Daniel Jones 2020 breakout
By Ed Stein
Tangibles
Looking over Jones’ numbers from Game 8 through the end of 2019 shows areas of significant improvement. His quarterback rating went from 74.9 in his first five starts to 95.4 in the final seven. Jones also increased his average passing yards per game by 40 over that same time. Comparing the most important stats of all, his touchdowns went from six to eighteen while the number of interceptions dropped from seven to five.
QB Data Mine put out a tweet that Jones had the second worse completion percentage of balls thrown 10-yards in the air or more.
Daniel Jones was 48.8% accurate on throws that travelled further than 10 yards downfield last year. Only Ryan Fitzpatrick was worse. pic.twitter.com/gDcP3CBOs6
— QB Data Mine (@QBDataMine) May 1, 2020
Sports Info Solutions even has a graphic that shows Jones had the worst completion percentage among starters on balls thrown over 20 yards in the air. The same graphic, however, also shows that while his completion percentage was low, his on-target rate was tops in the league. New York Giants receivers didn’t make the catches.
Recently, a series of articles were put out that have to do with dropping back to pass and experience. It started with Dan Pizzuta of Sharp Football Analysis pointing out how much better Jones was on one-step, no read, passes than he was with either three-to-five step and five, or more step dropbacks. Pizzuta concluded, the more reads Jones had to make, the worse he was.
John Shirley from Sports Info Solutions picked it up from there. His research found that quarterbacks progressively improve their accuracy on mid-to-deep drops, their first four seasons, as they get more experience reading defenses. The same does not exist for short drop back, quick passes. Either someone can do it or they can’t.
Then there is this tweet on Monday from NFL analyst Dan Orlovsky.
Rewatching all of @Giants Daniel Jones 2019 season-gonna post some videos tomorrow but he was absolutely lights out ACCURACY wise vs man coverage (#1 thing needed vs man)
— Dan Orlovsky (@danorlovsky7) May 25, 2020
Ball being placed exactly where it needs to be per where the defender is in coverage. Really well done 👏
Full seasons from Evan Engram, Golden Tate, Sterling Shepard, Saquon Barkley, and Darius Slayton (or even entire seasons for most of them) will greatly increase Jones’ connection rate. Not to mention, how much help he will get from a vastly improved offensive line, which includes this year’s fourth overall pick, Andrew Thomas.