After yet another disappointing display offensively on Sunday against the Philadelphia Eagles, Giants quarterback Daniel Jones was benched in the fourth quarter for Drew Lock to try and “spark” the offense, head coach Brian Daboll said after the game.
It didn’t work as New York lost 28-3 to the division rival to fall to 2-5 on the season that already feels like it’s slipping away.
Meanwhile, Jones will remain the starter next week against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday night.
“Daniel will be the quarterback going forward, but obviously we didn’t do enough offensively – hardly had any yards, no points,” Daboll said. “… Just not a good day, all the way around. No excuses. Gotta play better, coach better.”
Before leaving the game, Jones had been 14-for-21 (67 percent) on his pass attempts, but he only threw for 99 yards. He added 20 yards on the ground.
Lock entered the game and went 3-for-8 for six yards. He also had one carry for 13 yards.
“The three areas that we continue to work on over and over again are third down, red zone and explosive plays,” Daboll said. “It’s hard to generate points when your longest play is 14 yards.”
Jones’ disappointing performance comes a week after the Giants lost another offensively challenged game, a 17-7 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. Both games were at MetLife Stadium.
In fact, in four games in front of the home crowd this season, Jones is 0-4 with zero touchdown passes and four interceptions. In three road games, he’s 2-1 and has thrown six TD passes to no picks.
Monday’s game against the Steelers will be in Pittsburgh.
So, while Jones has shown that he’s capable of running the offense, the 27-year-old just hasn’t done it nearly consistently enough in his six years in New York.
And although Daboll said that Jones is not a limitation to what the team’s offense wants to do, the numbers are what they are and at some point, something has to give.
“We have some guys around him that I think can create explosive plays,” Daboll said. “We’ll just go back to the drawing board and do the very best we can to try to improve that area. For two weeks in a row – it’s been a little bit longer than that – we haven’t created them and we need to.”
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