Daniel Jones’ bad start in training camp confirms he was just their only option

Bad days stink. Whenever you have one, it’s important to focus on the next day so that you don’t start stacking bad days, one after another. Daniel Jones is currently in the middle of stacking bad days and it’s ugly.

He was a semi-focal point in the fourth episode of Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants on Tuesday night where he was thrown under a bus and then dragged for about 30 miles. He followed that up with a decently bad start to training camp on Wednesday. It’s tough going for the de facto quarterback of the New York Football Giants.

Daniel Jones and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day(s)

We knew that going into the offseason, the Giants were going to have a big decision to make at quarterback. They have been getting subpar play from their $40 million investment in Daniel Jones and they had the sixth-overall pick in the draft. 

Then we heard that Hard Knocks was going to be covering the Giants’ offseason, which would give us even more insight into how their decision would be made. Episode four gave us the biggest chunk of the quarterback decision that we’ve seen so far.

The episode started with Jones training/doing rehab after having his ACL surgically repaired, so you knew it was about to be a banger. The general theme throughout was that the general manager Joe Shoen and his posse went around to different pro days and saw a bunch of players they liked, specifically, Jayden Daniels the QB from LSU.

Shoen gets on his phone and makes a bajillion pre-draft phone calls, trying to trade up, down, left, and right, but gets no takers. Essentially it was a 40-minute episode where we watched a bunch of people succumb to the realization that they would have to suffer through the 2024 season with Jones as their signal caller.

One of the tougher parts of the episode is when Shoen has his family in his office and he’s asking them who the Giants should take at No. 6. His son comes out of left field with a drone strike on Danny Dimes. 

Just, for a second, put yourself in D.J.’s shoes. You have to go to work the next day knowing that your boss’s kid publicly said that you’re a liability to his dad’s career. After you get done doing a little bit of crying, you tell yourself that you’re going to show that little broccoli-haired puke. You’re going to go out to training camp and light the world on fire. You’re going to send a message to the world that 2024 is your year, and you’re going to do it while giving your boss’s son double birds.

Unfortunately for Jones, that’s not in the cards. He went out on the Giants’ first day of training camp and had a less-than-spectacular day. At one point, he only completed 2-of-8 pass attempts before he finished 7-of-12. 

If there’s one thing for him to hang his hat on, it’s that he’s actually cleared for contact and playing. That’s good news for Giants’ fans because his backup is Drew Lock, who…

… is still addicted to throwing interceptions. Well, Danny, you seem like a nice guy. Keep your chin up Tomorrow’s a new day. Hang in there. Whatever you have to do to get by.