Daniel Jones and Giants' offense have best showing of camp in joint practice with Jets
Giants quarterback Daniel Jones (8) throws a pass during Giants and Jets joint practice in East Rutherford, N.J., Thursday, August 25, 2022. Credit: Noah K. Murray
As Daniel Jones came off the field after his first seven-on-seven passes of Thursday’s joint practice against the Jets he received a signal from the sideline. Third-string quarterback Davis Webb held up one index finger then quickly made a pair of circles with his fingers and thumbs.
What did that gesture mean? Was it some kind of play call or route indicator?
“It meant 100%,” Webb said of letting Jones know he’d just had a perfect period, completing all five of his throws. “That’s what you want in seven-on-seven… It was a good period.”
Wide receiver David Sills was keeping track, too, as Jones’ completion streak moved into full team periods.
“I felt really good about how we started,” he said. “It kind of kickstarted us throughout the whole practice… Guys were excited about that.”
And so it went, completion after completion, connection after connection. A high throw that Kenny Golladay went up and caught over D.J. Reed on the sideline. A short pop to Saquon Barkley out of the backfield. Another to Golladay after Jones moved to elude pressure and a sweet play-action fake that left Sills open over the middle.
It wasn’t a perfect day by Jones, but the fact he hit the ground more often than his passes did — at one point he was gently knocked backward onto the turf in a crowded pocket — made it stand out as his top performance of training camp.
With the regular season two and a half weeks away, the timing of that kind of confidence-buoying day could not have been any better. That it came in the team’s first chance to play against the defensive starters from another team made it all the more significant.
After a summer in which the offense has looked disjointed and out of sync so often, Thursday’s performance seemed like a potential turning point, a lightbulb moment for Jones and his targets. A scheme that relies so heavily on communication and trust was able to hum along as the best unit on the field.
“It always helps early on in a drive or a period of practice getting a couple of completions and getting a rhythm and keeping it going and I thought we did that well,” Jones said. “This offense is predicated on that timing, knowing where and when guys are going to be open.
“I think we’re all getting more comfortable.”
By the time the workout was over most of the participants had lost track of Jones’ numbers and Jones himself said he wasn’t sure what he had done from a statistical basis. Webb had evidently stopped reminding him of it at some point.
After the 5-for-5 in seven-on-seven drills. Jones completed his first six passes of full team reps (including the one that eventually saw him knocked on his can). The Jets jumped offsides on one snap that created a broken play and Jones’ pass to Richie James was incomplete, but in a game that would not have counted. He followed that first non-completed ball with eight straight completions.
In all, taking away the free play on the Jets penalty and including the seven-on-seven drill, Jones was 19-for-19 before his final pass, a fade for Golladay in the end zone, was intercepted by Bryce Hall.
Some Giants thought that last pass was just knocked away as an incompletion but the Jets certainly celebrated as if it were a turnover.
The Giants had some things to celebrate, too.
“That feels great,” Sills said of such an impressive performance by Jones and the crew. “Coming from a new offense we’re all trying to learn and everyone is trying to get the timing and every component down, but we feel like we are kind of getting in a groove right now… That’s something that is very encouraging.”
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.
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