Daniel Jones can’t be anyone other than Daniel Jones. It is unfair to ask him to be Eli Manning.
Except that is who he was drafted to be.
The Giants drafted him to be The Next Eli Manning.
There will never be another Eli Manning, a living anachronism in a Twitter-Instagram world gone mad, a Hall of Fame quarterback and Hall of Fame gentleman revered universally over the course of his 16-year career by teammates and coaches and everyone whose life he touched in and around 1925 Giants Way.
Jones was drafted with the sixth pick of the 2019 NFL Draft not only because he has the dual-threat skills required in today’s NFL, but because it was determined by GM Dave Gettleman that he had the makeup required to try to live up to the hopes and prayers of Giants fans everywhere that he will be The Next Eli Manning.
Unless you are made of the right stuff, it can be a suffocating, debilitating burden that can make a man collapse under the weight of such great expectations.
The late HOF-bound former Giants GM George Young took Dave Brown to follow Phil Simms. Brown, like Jones, came from Duke. He was easy to root for, a tall, bright, handsome kid from Westfield, N.J.
“Battling the ghost of Phil Simms,” Brown said once. “It’s always going to be there whether I like it or not. He’s been a tremendous help for me in my career thus far, but I think the quicker that New York can put him to rest and allow me to play my style of football, the easier it will be not only for me, but for the team.”
Brown lost the battle with the ghost of Phil Simms. “Just win, baby,” was the advice Simms gave the kid, but Brown was not up to it. He looked the part, but couldn’t play the part. He threw 40 touchdowns against 49 interceptions in 57 games as a Giant.
Gettleman didn’t draft Sam Darnold or Josh Allen to be The Next Eli Manning, mostly because he fell head over heels for Saquon Barkley, and thought he could rebuild and win at the same time with a 37-year-old Manning behind an inferior offensive line, and thought wrong.
Now Jones will enter his sophomore season with Joe Judge as his new head coach and Jason Garrett as his new offensive coordinator. Manning had the luxury of one head coach — Tom Coughlin — for his first 12 seasons.
Jones checked all the boxes as a rookie, save for the fumblitis box. He had the benefit of sharing the quarterback room with Manning, and observing how a New York Football Giants franchise quarterback goes about his business.
The day after Jones was drafted, I asked him: When your career begins, you’ll be following a legend. How do you feel about that?
“I think with an opportunity like that, it’s important to be confident in who you are and not to try to be someone else through that, not to change. … I certainly look forward to learning from Eli, I think there’ll be a whole lot to learn there, but I’m also gonna be who I am and be confident in that.”
Jones is comfortable in his own skin. That’s a huge plus. You can’t try to be someone you are not. On the field, he is more fiery than Manning. Off it, he comes off as a Manning clone.
Eli Manning wasn’t really Eli Manning until his fourth season. But he wasn’t following Eli Manning. He was following Kerry Collins, who did take the Giants to Super Bowl XXXV (Ravens 34, Giants 7), and Kurt Warner, who at that time was brought in to be the veteran caretaker quarterback.
Manning started seven games as a rookie. Jones started 12, missing two with a high ankle sprain. He won’t start 210 consecutive games the way Manning did, because it is highly unlikely that anyone will.
Fairly or unfairly, Gettleman drafted Daniel Jones for the very reason that former GM Ernie Accorsi traded with the Chargers for Manning: to win championships.
“The Duke,” the football named for the late HOF Giants patriarch Wellington Mara, was placed in Daniel Jones’ hands last September, earlier than anyone, Manning included, could have or should have imagined. The idea was for Jones to have a chance to hit the ground running in 2020.
Maybe one day Daniel Jones will warm the hearts of Giants fans by beating the quarterback who follows Aaron Rodgers in an NFC Championship game at an arctic Lambeau Field. Maybe some day he will stand up to a beating in another NFC Championship game. Maybe some day he will engineer game-winning drives against the quarterback who follows Tom Brady and hoist a pair of Lombardi Trophies.
Good luck, kid. That’s the mandate for The Next Eli Manning, and that’s you.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiXWh0dHBzOi8vbnlwb3N0LmNvbS8yMDIwLzAxLzI0L3RoZS1jaGFsbGVuZ2UtZmFjaW5nLWRhbmllbC1qb25lcy1ub3ctdGhhdC1lbGktbWFubmluZy1pcy1nb25lL9IBYWh0dHBzOi8vbnlwb3N0LmNvbS8yMDIwLzAxLzI0L3RoZS1jaGFsbGVuZ2UtZmFjaW5nLWRhbmllbC1qb25lcy1ub3ctdGhhdC1lbGktbWFubmluZy1pcy1nb25lL2FtcC8?oc=5
2020-01-24 07:54:00Z
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