So the only choice is with or without sprinkles?

Ballard and Steichen drafted the rawest QB prospect ever at 4 and then started him day one. He has roughly one full season of starts and has now been benched twice for established QBs that MAY suck just a little less. That is Cleveland lever incompetence. There is simply no way to defend their “plan” here. They have fucked it up as bad as is humanly possible. If AR had sat the bench for a couple seasons it would have been understandable. If they were living through his growing pains it would be understandable. What they have done is simply not defendable. It doesn’t matter than Jones definitely has a higher floor than AR or that they MAY win a couple more games with him. It’s that it shows a team who again has no fucking clue what it is doing at the most important position in sports. And that isn’t a one season, one time issue. It’s constant. The team acquired veteran win now QBs (Rivers and Ryan) and treated the rest of the roster like a rebuilding year. They traded significant assets for a supposed solution (Wentz) and again treated it like a rebuilding year. They drafted the rawest rookie ever, start him and all of a sudden have to win now? Fuck that. It’s BS. Yes I know they are under fire - because of the stupid decisions they have repeatedly made. Decisions just like this one.

And I will point out, for all of the admittedly accurate talk about how bad AR has been, his record as a starter matches pretty closely to what Gardner achieved with the same roster and better than what Flacco did with the same roster. I don’t see Jones as significantly better than either of those two. There is no guarantee Jone’s less shitty stats will contribute any more to actual winning than ARs pressure and big plays. Jones certainly can’t be called a “winner” based on his 6 years in the league regardless of how bad the Giants were.

o


It would sting badly if Richardson went to another team and succeeded from about 2027 or 2028 to about 2033 or 2034.

I'm not sure that that would happen, but if it did, it would really sting.

o

It’s a real possibility. Right now my best case scenario is Ballard and Steichen are gone after this season and the new regime starts AR to see what they have, taking the boom or bust option the team should be taking this year. He shows improvement? Great, there is likely something here, keep working on it. He completely flames out? Great we know he isn’t getting there and we have a higher draft pick to look for his replacement. Even the best case scenario I can see with Jones makes me uncomfortable. He plays decent, team squeaks into the playoffs and has a first round exit. Great! Now what? Sign DJ to a multi year contract? Look for a different veteran option? Give AR a shot? Each one of those prolongs the cycle another year. It’s a continuation of the mediocrity the Ballard philosophy brings. And I’m over it. Giving up my season tickets after the season no matter what happens level of over it.

Tommy Devito played well for a month and then fell flat on his face. Lock went 1-1 in that season.

As i said before i don't think Jones is the saviour, i just think he is far more likely to produce something with a better supporting cast than he has ever had, than what AR has shown with this cast around him already.

I am not completely out on AR, he clearly has amazing arm talent and great running ability, but so far he has proven he can't read a defense, and that he is historically bad in terms of his accuracy!!

1 month of playing well is better than not playing well at all and a .500 record is better than .200.

If you don't take into consideration the long term upside and/or the only real objective you have is to finish above .500 this season and make the playoffs then it makes sense to go w/ Jones. But when you take into account the long term upside of each player the only way it make sense to go w/ Jones IMO is if he played really well in Preseason/TC or AR was really bad. Neither was the case. In the preseason games AR was more inconsistent, but he orchestrated by far our best drive of the preseason. Whereas Jones could only muster up FGs, including when he was playing w/ mostly our starters vs. backups. And while I didn't read every single article on TC, what I did read made it sound like they were pretty much even.

At any rate, I'll still be watching and hoping that Jones proves us all wrong. If he does then I'll definitely be happy to come on here and eat my fair share of crow.

One thing is for sure though, and that's Ballard and Steichen royally fucked this us from pretty much the get go.

You can turn it into a banana split, still gonna taste like shit. The QB class was horrible. Ballard's unwillingness to put round pegs in round holes is mind numbing. Every bit of film available on Richardson told us exactly what we were getting, then act shocked when we get exactly what the film said. I hated the pick even though we were QB desperate. There were still game changing defensive players on the board and we went for the biggest reach in 40 years, sans Jamarcus Russel.

What makes matters worse is that Ballard and Steichen were both well aware of how raw AR was (or at least they should have been), but then they decide to hand him the starters job from day 1 and then completely give up on the guy rather than try to work with him to get through his growing pains.

Come on, no one can take you seriously with that argument based on the super small sample.

Where’s Devito now?

Why not? It clearly shows how unbelievably bad Jones was in NY.

I’m not sure what the gotcha is here. Less than a year ago Daniel Jones was playing scout team safety for the Giants and then was on the Vikings practice squad. He was not significantly better than the people he was replaced with regardless of where they are now. Right or wrong, if Jones wasn’t a first round pick he may be out of the league at this point. Instead he’s a starter. And yes I recognize the same may apply to AR in the future. That doesn’t change the point about Jones performance.

My two cents. Clearly DJ outworked AR off the field. But Giants fans said that’s what he does. It’s on the field where he folds, he has trouble executing and hesitates at key seconds. Steichen runs a fairly friendly scheme though. So I’d like to see how he does with it. I expect Pittman and the TEs to have a big year. Less so AP and AD. I think Steichen believes he can get game management out of jones with me checkdown using the system.

There is something limiting AR, maybe it’s brains, maybe it’s work ethic, maybe it’s inexperience and he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Naive has been used a lot and I wonder if Jim forced them to play him. I’m also not on the blowout up train. Unless you have the number one pick, a hall of fame GM coming in, and a great QB sitting there. I’ve seen too many times where blowing it up just makes things worse.

I also don’t think this is the last we’ve seen of AR. DJ has never played a full season. 60 QB started last year. Odds are we will see him play. I’m still hopeful for him to get it together. I’m pulling for him. I know it’s a long shot and he always was. But if he does develop he would be a huge weapon in the league.

o

Richardson lost 10 pounds in the off-season, and looked even more agile and athletic than he already was.


o

There's more to work than working out and ditching Skittles. It's great that he did that, don't get me wrong. Spending the hours to dive into the playbook and study film is also work.

I agreed with the notion that if it was close, AR would get the nod. I still believe that, which tells me it wasn't close in their eyes.

o


Yes, and neither one of us knows that Jones did that more than Richardson did this off-season.

We do know for a fact that Richardson lost 10 pounds this off-season, and is lighter and more athletic than he was in the first place.

I'm sure that Jones worked diligently in the off-season. Richardson may or may not have worked just as diligently. We do know that he certainly worked on his physical health.

o

People keep saying how much potential AR has, but to me thats not his biggest issue. His biggest issue is he’s a running quarterback who cannot stay healthy.

Even if he figures it all out, we’d always be waiting for that next injury and we’d never have to wait to long.

A lot of quarterbacks get benched for a multitude of reasons, you’re never gonna convince me Tommy devito is-was-ever will be a better option at QB then Daniel Jones

What I thought we were looking for in AR was improvement, not that he somehow magically learned how to read defenses without actually reading defenses in games. AR clearly was better than when we last saw him. I thought we were going to take our lumps and try and develop the man. So after 15 games that's done? When Steichen now says what he wants is a great game manager who can identify and read defenses, how is it even possible for AR to compete with a 6 year veteran if that is now what you want? And if that was so important to Steichen how in the hell did AR beat out Minshew and Ryan? It seems like a rudderless ship just hoping that something works. No real direction, no plan.

That’s my biggest issue - it is clear that there is no real plan. It’s a consistent theme with Ballard where the only plan seems to be to stay flexible and not commit. If they wanted AR to learn to be a QB in practice and develop slowly that would have been fine. Let him sit behind a Minshew or Jones level QB until he can actually beat them out. The team competes as best it can in the meantime. Or they could start him immediately with the idea he needs reps to develop. In that case you are committing to the ups and downs until it is 1000% clear he isn’t it. In this case they should have brought in a veteran MENTOR QB for him to teach him how to prepare. Someone who knows they are on the team solely to help develop AR. You don’t worry about their performance on the field because it doesn’t matter. They’ve done neither of those. There is no plan. The team has wasted two more years and likely have actually hurt ARs development just to still have no idea what they want or where they are going at QB.

Of course Jim Forced Steichen to play AR. Jim also probably forced Ballard to draft him. God love Jim, but in his last few years on the planet he became a meddling SOB.

Ballard's entire tenure has been to snake oil a fucking plan to anyone and everyone that has held decision making authority- fucking repulsive. Every single day he remains employed by this organization is criminal!

We don't, true. But we do have some compelling circumstantial evidence in the fact that he lost out to Jones, especially considering Jones just got here and learned the system.

It's either evidence that he A.) didn't work as hard in that aspect, OR B.) he did work really hard but it still wasn't enough to equal Jones' understanding and execution.

Hopefully it was the latter (which I believe it was) and he can still blossom for us. If it was the former, he'll be gone.

I have no idea, never cared enough to watch DeVito play. I’ve seen Jones though and haven’t been impressed. And I know statistically you can’t really distinguish between the two. To me that says much more about Jones after 6 years than it does DeVito. Switch their pedigrees and Jones is the scrub instead of the supposed savior.

I never said that Devito was an overall better QB than Jones. The reason I have brought him up is to counter the argument that the only reason Jones sucked in NY was b/c of the talent around him. The fact that a rookie UDFA PS guy came in and performed better than Jones w/ the same players around him proves that Jones was very much part of the problem as well.

Also, to answer your question: Devito is still w/ the Giants as opposed to Jones who the Giants ate a $22M cap hit to run out of town.

I'm sure Jim approved of drafting AR, but Ballard w/out a doubt wanted to draft AR. His expressions when a team traded up to #3 and when he found out it was the Texans says it all. He went from looking like he was going to cry to jumping for joy. If you looked at Jim's tweets around the draft I actually think he preferred Levis (which obviously would have been a CF as well).

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Jim had forced Steichen to play AR. Another thought is that AR was showing to be further along than expected so Steichen decided to let him play, which actually tracks to AR's performance in his rookie year before his shoulder injury.

I think it’s the former. I mean I think he has worked harder and has gotten better in that regard. But I think it’s likely that the 6 year vet, who is likely on his last chance to stick as a starter, worked harder. For many that will be an indictment of AR. It isn’t to me only because I think It’s always been clear AR doesn’t know what it takes to be an NFL starting QB. I don’t think he’s lazy. I don’t think he’s entitled. I think he’s immature and naive. The team signed up to teach him that when they invested the #4 pick in him. There was nothing more important to the franchise than ARs development. And I have never heard anything to suggest they went out of their way to develop him. I don’t even see any indication they had an actual plan. They’ve never brought in a mentor for him. Which makes sense I guess because Ballard has never believed in vets mentoring guys. One of the many things that told me Ballard was an idiot and would take the team no where.

If Jones can have a similar season to Rivers, when he was here, and add 500 yds rushing, the offense will play winning football.

passing yds. 4000+
passing TD's 24+
interceptions 12-
completion pct. 65%+
fumbles 5-
rushing yds. 500+

I’m skeptical Jones can do that, but ok let’s say that happens. Then what? Do you commit to Jones and that level of QB play long term? Or do you let Jones leave to whatever team overpays for that production and continue on the Ballard QB carousel?

I’m curious why after years of defending Ballard not trying to win, always waiting another year to fix something major, for some guys this year suddenly winning the max amount of games possible is the only thing that matters. Future be damned.

And if Jones plays as well as Manning or Luck did in their prime then we'll be SB contenders.

If Jones plays as well as this year as Rivers did in '20 then I'll be perfectly happy w/ us signing Jones to an extension and shipping AR off. Like you though, I seriously doubt that happens. I think at best we get Jones "good" year in NY passing and his career average in rushing:

3,200 yds, 63% completion %, 15/5 TD/Int; ~500 yds rushing and 4 TDs. Which is maybe just good enough to squeak us into the playoffs.

With only one year of that big of a jump in production I would not invest in Jones long term. That’s the kind of decision that kill teams. He’s had one decent season (that didn’t reach this level) got paid for it and then fell apart. I have no trust he is a franchise QB. He’s at best the kind of guy that keeps you in no man’s land, winning enough games to keep you from finding his replacement while never being good enough to truly compete. And I think that is being fairly optimistic.

If Jones can do that, I'll apologize to him/Steichen/Ballard, tip my hat to Jones for being able to do it, tip my hat to Steichen and Ballard for having the plan and vision to see it is possible, and hope the Colts re-sign him.

It would give him a 91% passer rating (assuming say 500 pass attempts), which would be close to his best year ever, and would be career highs for him in attempts, passing yards, passing TDs (tie), and a career low in fumbles per game.

Let's go!

Comparable to his rookie stats of 3700yds, 24td, 12int, 300yds rushing. Unless he's shellshocked, I don't think it's outlandish to think he could replicate it.

And again, not to say I expect this caliber of ascension from him... But Sam Darnold had worse numbers than Jones, floated around, and then had an MVP-worthy season out of nowhere.

Jones wouldn't have to do all that. Hopefully he does... but he could have ok, efficient numbers, move the chains, rely on the weapons and compliment the defense rather than gas them and win games.

That could be enough for Steichen and Ballard to make the point(s) they need to make to CIG... Points being A.) finding a QB is a crapshoot and B.) that they can field a competitive team even with Daniel Fucking Jones at QB, so you'll want us when we hit at QB.

Pretty simple really, jobs are on the line, careers are nearing their end, and fans are fed up with incompetent play and self inflicted failures leading to playoff whiffs

Also, Jones rookie season was a 16 game season. He also has a much better supporting cast, than any of those seasons. I predict he can and will be close go those numbers.

Jones being just good enough to save this regime is my nightmare scenario. None of those things will have magically changed if the team wins 1-2 more games and makes the playoffs. The core philosophy that led to this point would still be in place with the same type question marks at QB.

The most yds Jones has thrown for is 3205 in his 4th year. The only year he has ever played 16 games. To get to 3700 you have to extrapolate his highest per game average to 16 games. His highest average was his rookie year. Not really a comforting stat for a 6 yr vet. And a main reason he’s only played 16 games once in his career is because of injury. Same knock as AR just proven in even more seasons.

So the Ballard selling point is “after 9 years in the worst division in football, if I go all in, win now mode I’m so good I can make the playoffs. And my 8th choice at QB and a NY Giants castoff is better than the guy we selected #4 in the draft and have no idea how to develop”. If ownership buys that, the fans are really screwed.

Good point. Guess I'm too eager to get our QB situation solved that if he equaled the 2nd best QB performance that we've had in the past 10 years that I thought we should lock him up. A more prudent approach would be to franchise him and if he repeats said performance then sign him to a long term contract. Realistically this is a moot point though b/c the chance of Jones being as good as Rivers at any point in his career are pretty damn slim.

As rn already pointed out you're incorrect on your stats as Jones threw for 3,027 yds in his rookie season and not 3,700. You also left off that he fumbled 19 times that year.

Yeah, I think I already extrapolated his rookie year to 16 games and used that 3725 number by mistake. Point still stands... better than Darnold and some other redemption arcs we've seen in recent years. Not like it's a preposterous outlook.

The selling point is the same it's always been. I know it doesn't compute with you, and fair enough, it doesn't compute with a lot of fans. But the world makes a lot more sense if you don't bang your head against a wall and ask God what mysterious voodoo magic Chris Ballard has to keep his job this long...

This team has an offense that is relatively loaded with weapons and an offense line that is typically, year-in and year-out one of the better units in the league. We were top-10 in scoring with Gardner Minshew. Before the 22' bizarro-fest, we were 9th Carson Wentz. Averaged something like 28ppg with Rivers/Luck. They have, and have had, plenty around the QB. That's why he's still around.

So it may come down to whether or not one believes that finding a QB is a crapshoot or not. I do. I think the science of finding a QB is: if one is available when you have a premium pick, take him. And if you find a Wilson in the 3rd, Cousins in the 4th, or Purdy in the 7th, sometimes they can play and congratulations.