Jones vs. Jones: a tale of two franchises

There are two young quarterbacks in the NFL named Jones right now, and they have a lot in common. Both were relatively unheralded in college, both were projected as late first round picks, and they both were picked sooner than expected. Both are regarded as extremely strong on the intangibles: very smart, very coachable, and very hard-working. Both are accurate passers.

From there things diverge. The first to enter the league, Daniel (“Danny Dimes”) Jones of the New York Giants, has played for parts of three seasons behind a disaster of an offensive line within a dysfunctional franchise. The second, Mac Jones, has played one season for the NFL’s flagship franchise of the past two decades in the Patriots.

Of the two, Daniel is regarded as having the greater physical gifts: he’s taller, more mobile, and has a stronger arm; he throws a nice deep ball and regularly makes big plays with his legs. Arguably more upside there. The results have told a different story, however. Mac led the Patriots to the playoffs in his one opportunity, and Daniel has been under .500 every year.

Not surprisingly, the narrative around the two quarterbacks has followed the results. Despite a rocky finish to his rookie season, a great many Pats fans believe they’ve found their franchise quarterback of the future. Rookies get better, and Mac has done just fine at 10-7. It’s not unreasonable to think that as he improves, the Patriots will resume contending every season. (Please settle down and hold the Brady comparisons, though.)

Just down I-95, the mood is different. Many fans and pundits are calling for the Giants to move on from Daniel and draft his replacement, because look at his results! As a Giants fan I cringe when I hear that. I think Daniel Jones has the potential to be regarded as the equal of Phil Simms or Eli Manning when he’s done, if only they can clean up their offensive line problems.

Consider poor Mike Glennon. For seven seasons he looked like the prototype NFL backup, functioning serviceably or even well for a variety of teams, with rating stats at or near the league average. Then he came to the Giants and took over when Jones went down with injury. Jones’ stats had been mediocre, with a 4-7 record and a career-low 41.7 QBR (the league average is 50) when he went down. Enter the formerly average Glennon, who promptly went 0-4 in his four starts with a comically bad QBR of 11.9. It was a nightmare. Jake Fromm wasn’t much better, at 0-2 with a 15.4 QBR.

So if Daniel could at least compete when his replacements couldn’t, why does everybody want to get rid of him? If he’d played for the Patriots this season, he might have done quite nicely, and we might be bullish on his future. I shudder to think of what the less experienced and less mobile Mac would have looked like behind the Giants line.

Ditto whoever comes next if things don’t improve. Why should the Giants roll the dice on another college quarterback with less experience and less upside than Daniel, burning a high first round draft pick in the process, to watch that guy fail too? Please no. Call me crazy, but maybe instead they should draft a couple of offensive linemen and give their quarterback a couple of seconds to look downfield on occasion. I like what I’ve seen from Jones, and he makes me at least a little bit hopeful about the future, provided that the once-proud Giants don’t screw it up for us fans yet again.

Some people think that Mac is the Patriots’ franchise QB of the future, and Daniel should be thrown out with yesterday’s leftover fish. But if I were new Giants GM Joe Schoen, I wouldn’t trade Daniel for Mac straight up if given the opportunity. I only hope the Giants get good enough under Schoen and new coach Brian Daboll to give Danny Dimes the chance to prove me right.

Can the GOAT be overrated?

 Tom Brady is retiring, and he is by acclamation the GOAT, the greatest of all time. Certainly the greatest quarterback, and maybe the greatest football player. Maybe the greatest American athlete of all time. (Most Americans wouldn’t bother with the national modifier.) If he really is the greatest, is it even possible for him to be overrated?

Let’s consider. If you look at results, it’s a no-brainer. Nobody else is even close statistically during the regular season, and the comparisons get even more absurd when you look at the post-season.

But results in a team sport are tied to the team. Brady was coached by Bill Belichick, who is just as arguably the GOAT among coaches. Josh McDaniels, the offensive coordinator, is given a lot of credit for the Patriots offense, and he made sure that Brady could get rid of the ball quickly. Wes Welker and Julian Edelman were the kind of quick receivers that could consistently get open when needed. Some people consider Rob Gronkowski the GOAT among tight ends. Dante Scarnecchia, the offensive line coach, was a huge factor in the Patriots’ success. He put a line in front of Brady that was consistently among the better units in the league. This Giants fan could only look on in envy as Eli Manning was getting pounded behind a lousy line for most of the last half of his career. (And he didn’t even have the worst of it in his family—read up on Archie’s career some time.)

 When Brady got pressured, he was still very good, but he wasn’t quite as great. In two Super Bowls against the Giants he put up a total of 31 points. Still good against those defenses, but human.

Did Brady do more with all of his assets than other great quarterbacks would have? Very possibly. But how would Peyton Manning or Dan Marino or Aaron Rodgers or Drew Brees or Patrick Mahomes have done if they’d been on those Patriot teams? It’s easy to imagine that they’d have been even more successful than they already were.

What would Brady’s career have looked like if he’d been a Brown or a Lion for his entire career? He still would have been a great quarterback, and might even have dragged one of those franchises kicking and screaming to a Super Bowl, maybe two. Or maybe none. If his offensive line was being beaten consistently and his defenses were terrible, his regular season numbers would have seemed more ordinary, and he might not have even reached the post season. We might look at him somewhat like we look at Marino.

The surrounding pieces make a difference. Brady was still great with the 2019 Patriots, but they didn’t have a lot of offensive weapons for him. At 6.3 he had the lowest yards per attempt since his second full season. And he had the lowest touchdown percentage of his career. He still led them to the playoffs, but they were knocked out in the Wild Card round. The next season he went to the Buccaneers, who were loaded, and poof! He was a Super Bowl champion and looked like the GOAT again. Coincidence?

OK, let’s take a step back and look at the question of quarterback greatness another way. if you had to put together a team from scratch without all of those Patriot assets, which quarterback do you take first? For a lot of Pats fans, the answer is still Tom Brady, and you can’t say they’re wrong. But for other observers it’s at least an interesting question. Certainly other quarterbacks were good in the clutch, smart, and had physical gifts even greater than Brady’s. Maybe he had something they didn’t, but you could make a decent case for several guys as your first pick. If you asked players, coaches, and fans from across the country, Brady might or might not end up on top overall. Even if he came out ahead, you’d get a lot of different answers.

If you wouldn’t take Brady first in an all-time mock draft, is he really the best quarterback? Or is he maybe, despite all of his mind-boggling accomplishments, just a tad overrated?