At this point, it’s abundantly clear that the New York Giants are not a good football team on both sides of the ball.
Their offensive ineptitude has been exacerbated with the season-ending torn ACL suffered by Saquon Barkley, but second-year quarterback Daniel Jones continues to deal with turnover issues.
He has six giveaways over the first three games of the season — four interceptions and a pair of fumbles — that has been one of the banes of the Giants offense’s existence.
It’s also been a sizable blemish staining the countless positives that the 23-year-old has shown in his young career, something that offensive coordinator Jason Garrett is trying to focus on.
“One of the things that’s part of the NFL is adversity. The guys on the other side are good, you’re going to be challenged every snap,” Garrett said Thursday. “Regardless of what position you’re playing, playing with confidence that you can have success on this particular down is critical. You want to do that with all the guys and you certainly want to do that with your quarterback.”
“Quarterback has the ball in his hands on every play and they’re not going to go perfectly, so you have to be able to handle the adversity of the game and keep it going,” he continued. “That’s what we really like about Daniel. Whether he has success or failure or adversity on the previous play, he’s going to come back.”
Week 4 provides another stiff test for Jones and the Giants offense against the Los Angeles Rams (4:05 p.m. ET, FOX) — particularly in the form of All-Pro pass rusher Aaron Donald, who has three sacks in his first three games.
“He’s a great player. One of those players that probably every week, in every game he’s played throughout his career, he’s gotten special attention from the opposing offense,” Garrett said. “And he always somehow, someway finds a way to show up in the game… He’s one of those rare, unique players.”
To keep him at bay, the Giants need to start getting something out of a non-existent run game, which has brought in Devonta Freeman and Alfred Morris over the last two weeks in an attempt to cushion the blow of losing Barkley.
Jones has been the Giants’ leading rusher in the meantime, prompting Garrett to call out the lack of rushing prowess within his ranks.
“It starts on the line of scrimmage and running the ball, we haven’t done that,” he said. “Everybody’s a part of the running game, the offensive line, the tight end, the receivers, the backs… we just haven’t consistently blocked well enough and run well enough.”
“We just need to play better across the board offensively.”
