What is needed for DJ as Comeback Player of Year

Here are the DraftKings odds for the 2024 Comeback Player of the Year as of May 8th.

Aaron Rodgers +100
Joe Burrow +200
Kirk Cousins +500
Anthony Richardson +750
Russell Wilson +1200
Deshaun Watson +1500
Nick Chubb +2000
Tank Dell +2500
Daniel Jones +2500
Justin Herbert +2500

There are different organizations that have their own Comeback Player. Some organizations are the Associated Press (AP), Pro Football Writers Association (PFWA), Sporting News, and United Press International (UPI). The Associated Press winner has been a quarterback the last six years. A comeback player can be so designated as a player who overcomes adversity to return to remarkable performance, in the form of not being in the NFL the previous year, a severe injury, or simply poor performance. Unlike some of the more favored prospects, Daniel Jones would be a great story as he would comeback from both a severe injury and poor performance.

Here are some statistics that would need to improve this year to win this award. The table addresses some of Jones’ weak stats. It shows the regular season average for teams that won the Super Bowl over the last 10 years. Followed by the league average in 2023, Jones’ career average, Jones best season and year, Jones career games at Super Bowl average and the percentage that is of his career starts.



Touhdowns
Some related news is that scoring has been declining in the NFL for the last three seasons. The number of games that had less than 30 points combined has increased from starting after 2020 with 2020 having 44 games, 2021 with 76 games, 2022 with 84 games and 2023 with 94 games. Granted 2020 had 16 less games but a definite trend.

In the 2023 draft out of 58 receiver prospects looked at, Jalin Hyatt was number one in touchdowns per receptions taking into account both last year and career. Looking at their TDs/Rec and TDs/Game the top five prospects in descending order were Nathaniel Dell, AT Perry, Jalin Hyatt, Jordan Addison and Zay Flowers. With the exception of Hyatt all other four made the top ten in rookie receiving touchdowns. Hyatt had 0 receiving touchdowns in his rookie season. Over the last two seasons there have been only seven players in the FBS that have had 14+ receiving touchdowns in a season. The Giants now have two of them on their team – Nabers and Hyatt.

Rookie tight end Theo Johnson had 5 of his 7 touchdowns last season as red zone receptions. Isaiah Hodgins has been Daniel Jones best red zone receiver. He has had 7 targets and 5 touchdowns.

Jones has had only eight career touchdown passes from within the Giants’ goal line to the 60 yard line. One was in ‘22 to Slayton on a short pass from the NYG 46 yard line. Another was to Slayton in ‘20 and was a deep pass from the Steeler 41 yard line. The other six passes were to players no longer on the team. In Hyatt’s last season in college his 15 touchdowns were spread out pretty evenly from his team’s 20 yard line to the red zone.

After four straight seasons of 17 or less passing touchdowns the Giants have the receivers to breakout. In 2019 the Giants were tie for fifth in passing touchdowns with 30 and Daniel Jones had the 11th best TD %.

Yards
The lower yards per game compared to Hurts and Prescott is attributable to small discrepancies in two areas. The competitors have averaged an additional 0.8 air yards per completion coupled with an additional 0.6 yards per completion in yards after the catch. That 1.5 yards per completion on average translates to an additional 32 passing yards per game. Dak has a slightly better completion percentage and both competitors play more games on average. All translate to low total yards for Jones.

Of 37 wide receiver 2023 draft prospects examined, Jalin Hyatt had the fourth best yards after the catch numbers with 7.3 yards. The two prospects before Hyatt at 2nd and 3rd have made the top quarter of the league in their rookie season in YAC per reception. They are Marvin Mims and Puka Nacua, Hyatt had the worst YAC on the Giants with a 2.1.

Darius Slayton had the best YAC among Giant receivers with 6.0 per reception. That was good for top 37% of the league which includes running backs and tight ends. To put a little more perspective on how good that was it beat out JaylenWaddle (5.8) and Tyreek Hill (5.5). That was a bit surprising. The data is available at https://www.nfl.com/stats/player-stats/category/receiving/2023/reg/all/receivingreceptions/desc. Slayton was also 39th in the league in receptions of 20+ yards with 11. With that he does not beat out Tyreek Hill who led the league with 29.

Wan'Dale Robinson, Darius Slayton and Isaiah Hodgins all made the top 40% of league pass catchers in percent of targets that make first down with all at the 36-37% mark for players with 20+ targets. Malik Nabers was number one in 2023 in yards per game. The year before Jalin Hyatt was fourth.

Plotting Daniel’s yards for each game the trend line is going down.



For two of the years of Jones’ NFL career he was rated highly in deep ball passing. Both mentioned he did not do it a lot but when he did he was good at it. See https://www.nfl.com/news/next-gen-stats-top-10-deep-passers-of-2020-aaron-rodgers-lands-at-no-4 and https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-ranking-all-32-nfl-starters-by-deep-passing-performance-in-2022

In 2019 Jones had five 300+ passing yard games. He was one of only six rookies to accomplish that in NFL history. With improvement from the offensive line and receivers the downward trend in passing yards should be reversed.

Passer Rating
Daniel had a two year trend in in 2021 and 2022 in which his passer rating improved each year. He went from 80.4 in 2020 to 84.8 in 2021 and to 92.5 in 2022. His best year in 2022 he was just above the league average of 91. His QBR that year of 62.9 was sixth in the league. Jones has 27% of his career games at or above the Super Bowl winners average of a 98 passer rating. That percentage sounded good but it actually ranks in the bottom quarter in the league.

Adjusted Yards per Attempt
This is similar to yards/attempt but takes into account touchdowns and interceptions. Like his passer rating this also improved showing the sane two year trend. His best season on 2022 was above the league average. Thirty one percent of his career games was at or above the 10 year Super Bowl teams regular season average. This seems like a doable goal for improvement.

Yards per Completion
A third of Jones’ career games have been at or better than the Super Bowl teams averages for the regular season. Which has been about the league average over those years. This seems doable for improvement.

Wins
Improving these statistics should translate into more wins. However a win is a team effort. I believe you can win Comeback player without the wins. But the wins even alone could be enough to win the Comeback player. In my post of https://corner.bigblueinteractive.com/index.php?mode=2&thread=646614 I showed how Jones has joined elite players in game winning drives and 4th quarter comebacks.

I may be labeled as a member of the DJFC with this post. But if looking forward to the season with some hope and optimism does that, then so be it. Go Giants!