Phil Simms thinks Giants should show same patience with Daniel Jones as they did with him
LAS VEGAS — Despite a bumpy start to his career, the Giants stuck with Phil Simms and it led to them winning a Super Bowl. Simms believes the Giants should show the same patience with current quarterback Daniel Jones.
But he understands it won’t be easy for anyone involved.
“Unless you are Patrick Mahomes and a few other people, you are going to go through these periods and you just have to fight,” Simms, an analyst for CBS, said at the network’s media availability at Super Bowl LVIII on Tuesday.
“Would I have anything to tell Daniel Jones? ‘Hey man, buckle up. It’s going to be rough. Just show how tough you are and do it and just keep working. That’s all you can do.’ ”
Simms bemoaned the league-wide lack of patience for quarterback development these days and pointed to a number of other examples where teams gave up on players too soon. He is concerned the Bears are about to do that with Justin Fields. Simms certainly has a soft spot for the issue since he came to the Giants as a first-round pick in 1979 but in his first five years he made only 34 starts because of injuries (including missing the entire 1982 campaign with a knee tear). He went 14-20 in those starts and threw 39 touchdowns with 43 interceptions.
Simms insisted that in today’s climate the Giants would have dumped him.
“They would have moved on,” he said. “You got hurt. Get out. Not ‘get out,’ but that’s just the way it would be. Really the media and the fan base would drive it a lot. They tried to do it to me anyway.”
Simms said several factors allowed him to remain in New York.
“First off I was a high draft pick so that helped me a lot,” he said. “And two . . . I was better than the other guys. That’s why they kept me. I never walked on the field and said ‘Wow, this guy throws it better than me.’ Maybe I was arrogant, which I was at times, of course, but I think that’s another reason.”
Even when he was hurt, he said, he was able to show spurts of quality play.
“So they were patient with me and it worked out I think,” he said.
Now the Giants are in a similar position with Jones. He has played five seasons for them. He has had a number of injuries, including a torn ACL that ended his most recent season. His record is 21-31-1 and he’s thrown 62 touchdowns with 40 interceptions.
General manager Joe Schoen gave Jones a four-year, $160 million contract last offseason and has said he expects Jones to be the starting quarterback for the team at the beginning of the 2024 season (assuming, of course, he is healthy enough to do so). But he’s also said the Giants will be looking to add a quarterback, perhaps even up high in the draft this April.
“When free agency starts, the draft, whichever avenue we decide to take, we will address the position,” Schoen said last month when the disappointing 2023 season ended.
Simms gave something of a lukewarm assessment of Jones.
“He definitely has starting NFL talent,” he said. “That’s the one thing I’ll argue against as long as you want.”
He also said he would like to see more emotion from the stoic player.
“I wish he’d yell at somebody sometimes,” he said. “Is that OK? Not that that makes you a quarterback, but it tells me something about you too. I didn’t do it on the field but poor Bart Oates. He would sit next to me on the bench and I’d go ‘Bart!’ I look back and I go ‘Why didn’t he punch me?’ ”
Simms put some of the onus on Brian Daboll, too. He said he adheres to the scouting axiom that if you watch a quarterback’s top 20 plays, “that’s who they are,” and it is up to the coaches to make sure there are more of those.
But is having “starting NFL talent” enough to win championships in today’s league, where the organizations that have elite quarterbacks are the ones who routinely play deep into January?
“It’s a start,” Simms said. “If you don’t have that you’re never going to have all the other stuff. But it’s a good start. I think success gives you confidence and then you can turn into another guy. I think he has that chance. But like I said, it’s going to be really rough.
“Why? The media. The fans. The national people who think they know. But I’ve watched him enough and I’ve seen him enough to see the top end.”
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
