Love him or not, New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones is a gamer.
Playing without many of his top receiving weapons in Sunday’s game against the Chicago Bears, Jones only threw 13 passes completing eight, for just 71 yards.
The strategy was for Jones to lean heavily on his star running back, Saquon Barkley, and his own running ability. The strategy worked with some help from the Bears, who for some reason left Jones huge chucks of real estate to romp through.
Barkley rushed for 146 yards on 31 attempts. Jones ran mainly off naked bootleg calls in which he had an option to throw the football. In several cases, he simply tucked the ball in and took off, seeing no defenders in sight.
Jones rushed six times for 68 including touchdowns of 21 and eight yards.
“One, he’s a heck of a quarterback. He’s very athletic,” Barkley said after the game about Jones. “Two, we kind of knew after the first drive what their gameplan was going to be and to load the box up a little bit. If they are going to do that, they don’t have enough guys out there. We did a great job of even though they loaded the box, the o-line was leaning on them, making the right calls, creating movement. I was able to make some of the right reads, put a little pressure on the defense and DJ was DJ and made the plays.”
Jones ended up tweaking his ankle and was replaced by backup Tyrod Taylor, who would leave the game himself shortly after with a concussion.
As the only other active quarterback, Jones was forced to return to the field with his ankle heavily wrapped. He began by lining up at receiver, even though he couldn’t run, and Barkley took over in a ‘wildcat’ role for the team’s 11 offensive snaps.
“When I saw Tyrod go down, I kind of realized I’m up next,” said Barkley. “I’m the quarterback. First of all, you have to give credit to DJ coming back in the game. I can’t curse, he’s a tough you know what. Nothing but respect for him to go in and continue to fight through that for his team just shows you the type of person and type of player he is.
“I think I just tried my best to read it. It’s really not that hard, I guess, but I think I made the right reads on them. But we were able to keep the ball moving, get down field, get some points and the defense did a great job for us.”
Barkley and Jones, two of Dave Gettleman’s most-criticized draft picks playing on the final years of their rookie contracts, showed both grit and creativity in a win that brought the Giants to 3-1 on the season.
Neither will complain about the double duty or risks they took to make that happen. Maybe this shouldn’t be their last year here.
