Daniel Jones more in sync with Giants' unheralded receivers

Kenny Golladay didn’t see a pass come his way in Sunday’s preseason game despite playing 21 snaps at wide receiver. Wan’Dale Robinson did get to touch the football for the first time in his pro career in that contest – in fact he did so three times – but lost yards on two of those plays and gained just 1 yard on the third. Kadarius Toney hasn’t played in a preseason game this summer as he recovers from yet another lower body injury.

And yet Daniel Jones has looked as comfortable and confident in his two preseason performances as he has since he burst onto the field with that strange mix of naivety and swagger as a rookie, before his carousel of coaches got his head spinning and punctured his poise. He’s completed 20 of the 26 passes he has thrown in the two games and while he did throw an interception Sunday night against the Bengals it came on a pass that could have been thrown a tiny bit better but caught a whole lot better by tight end Daniel Bellinger.

“I think he’s been in pretty good rhythm when he’s playing games,” coach Brian Daboll said of Jones. “He’s made steady strides. He played well. He was in good command.”

So how can that be? How can the quarterback be playing at a high level when the starting wide receiver corps the Giants have built around him – Golladay, Robinson and Toney -- is not producing?

Maybe it’s’ because the depth chart at the position isn’t as defined as previously thought. In fact it may be upending.

Because while Jones hasn’t had much luck throwing to Golladay and Robinson in the preseason games (a combined 4-for-6 for 3 yards) he’s been lights out when aiming for the so-called second-stringers Collin Johnson and David Sills (a combined 7-for-8 for 109 yards). They’ve seemingly become his favorite and most reliable targets this summer… and perhaps they will be so in the fall as well.

“They’ve stepped their game up,” Daboll said of Johnson and Sills. “They're right in the mix, not just to make a team but to play.”

Daboll has made a big deal about the collaborative nature of the offense and how he wants Jones to be forthcoming in regard to which calls and routes he likes and which ones he doesn’t. Perhaps such honesty regarding not just the plays but the players would go a long way toward helping Jones this season. Golladay, Robinson and Toney represent a tremendous investment of draft picks (a first- and second-rounder) and capital (Golladay’s $72 million free agency contract). But if Jones has a better connection with Johnson and Sills, they should play more even if their combined salary of about 1.7 million for 2022 is one-tenth of Golladay’s.

Let’s take Robinson out of this discussion because he is a rookie. So how did Johnson and Sills become more in sync with Jones than Toney and Golladay, the latter of which was such a non-factor in Sunday’s game it seemed as if the Giants were playing 10-on-11?

“There’s nothing more valuable than reps,” Jones said. “Getting together, going through it in practice, seeing things, having the conversations, correcting things and moving forward. There’s a process to it and you’ve got to put the time in, put the effort in, and go through it.”

Sills, who has spent the past few offseasons working with Jones on a daily basis, has “definitely done that,” Jones said.

“But we’ve got to do that with everyone as a group,” he added.

Hmmm.

Golladay has shown some budding sympatico with Jones in practices and they have connected on a couple of promising passes in recent days, including one deep ball down the left sideline late last week. But everyone on the team, it seems, is aware their relationship as a quarterback and receiver still has a long way to go… even the receiver who appears to have the tightest bond with Jones.

“I think their relationship has definitely grown over the last year or so that Kenny has been here,” Sills said of the Jones-Golladay dynamic. “I think it does take a little while to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of a receiver, what everyone’s good at, what everybody still needs to work on… I think they’re definitely getting a feel for each other more and more as training camp goes on and I’m excited to see what happens in the future.”

Daboll wasn’t concerned about Golladay’s curious and conspicuous absence from the stat page in Sunday’s game.

“I think Daniel did a very good job of throwing the ball where he needed to throw it, making good decisions, playing on time, playing under control,” Daboll said. “That’s the unique thing about a receiver or a skill player, you’re not guaranteed to get all these looks. It’s predicated, at least how we do it, on how the defense plays and our read progression. I thought Daniel did a really good job with that.”

It meant throwing seven passes to Sills and Johnson and none to Golladay against backup defensive backs in this latest preseason game.

If that ratio remains similarly tilted in the regular season it could be a surprise to many. It might also be for the betterment of both Jones and the team.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

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.