I know - another stupid DJ thread. To me, it is shocking how bad DJ is at this point in his career, given his underlying traits. Why is he this bad?
There are certain physical things you need in an NFL QB - size, arm, hopefully legs. DJ has those. Not a great arm, but certainly good enough.
There are certain character traits you need in an NFL QB - smart, willing to work hard, emotionally able, coachable. DJ has those.
So what went wrong. The most common answer we get is processing speed, but this is a trainable trait. The human brain is designed to improve its pattern matching with practice in a specific task. Yet DJ is worse at processing now than he was in his rookie year (in my opinion).
In the end, I think his problem is a personality one. I know someone who is a great athlete. Would have played D1 except for injury, and I think would have had a shot at the league if he wanted it. But from the time he was a little kid, he lacked something, psychologically, that seems to me key in great athletes. He could not bear losing, and so if he was behind, he would just give up. Don't think he is that way in life now, but it was why he couldn't pitch - great arm, great size, good control. But frustrate him and he would go off the rails. Coaches would see him in practice and couldn't wait to get him on the mound. Risk of failure shows up and inst-collapse.
I think DJ is somewhat similar. He is hyper coachable (thus the love he receives). But part of that is a fear of failure that is so high that it leads to failure. The truly great QBs can't imagine themselves failing. Look at some of the gun slinging throws that Eli or Favre made. Especially the ones that worked. Including Eli's iconic throw in the SB. DJ could make those throws. But he never would. He would take the sack, or throw it away, or make a stupid lower risk throw that works out even worse. And then those traits got enhanced by the Garrett offense.
Often college football provides an obvious test for this personality trait. But Duke did not. Since they were never really expected to win, it was easy to say DJ played great even though the team lost (a familiar refrain). You need a QB with a killer instinct who is fearless. Then you need to harness not suppress those traits. Here is hoping we get that.
I have always wondered if DJ is of this type. He sees it but doesn't pull the trigger, perhaps he would be better suited as an accountant?
Ding. Done. There's no mystery, it's been there to see since his Dook days.
Jones is who he's always been. A terrible and QB desperate GM selected him at 6th overall because he fell in love with him.
There's plenty of college QBs just like Jones. They just never make it the NFL.
Brain takes extra energy to adjust to cocked eyes, thus leaving less power for processing. This isn't rocket science.
This 100%. The guy’s agility and footwork are awful. And he is slow to understand what he is seeing. That’s always been the case.
That is Jones’s greatest weakness, and ALWAYS HAS BEEN! Many want to point to his rookie year, but ignore a couple of salient facts -almost all of his production came against 3 teams which had 3 of the worst pass defenses of the past decade. They also ignore that Shurmur dumbed down the offense for Jones. That’s fine most coaches will do that with rookie QB’s and then add more complexity when the QB gets more comfortable.
And that’s when the problems came in. Jones couldn’t handle more complexity. He is slow to read post-snap changes in coverage, and that is lethal for NFL QB’s. Every DC knows to show him one thing pre-snap, and then change it at the snap. Daboll was able to get a productive season out of Jones by leveraging Barkley and Jones’s running ability to keep defenses guessing.
But that wasn’t sustainable, and Philly completely exploited in the playoffs. Spy on him, keep him in the pocket, and force him to make plays from the pocket. EVERY DC in the league saw that master class and copied it, and Jones has been reeling ever since.
Many will point to the neck injury v Miami, but I don’t buy it. He completely sucked before that. He played one good (OK, brilliant) half v AZ, but was otherwise unplayable. He’s been somehow worse since that Miami game, so the injury had some impact, but doesn’t change the fact that he was not a starting level QB, and hasn’t been since that playoff game in Minny.
Josh Rosen was booted after 1 season. Yet the Giants keep doing the DJ thing over and over again expecting different results.
All the little stuff that we shorthand as "processing" is essentially the definition of being a good QB. Pocket awareness, Pocket movement, pre and post snap reads, manipulating defenders, judging precisely how to throw a ball - it all happens in fractions of seconds.
Logs of guys have sufficient physical skills. Few of them have "processing". And it's hard to predict. Josh Allen did it. Justin Fields didn't. Joe Burrow has it. Sam Darnold doesn't (until last week). Dak Prescott has it (nobody saw that coming).
It's all a mystery until you see them play. People will be right about some guys and wrong about some guys. Fans, analysts, GMs, everyone. You just don't know.
Of course with Jones we did know a while ago, but kept and paid him anyway.
It has always been an illusion with DJ because he has central casting physical talent and is a pillar of work ethic character. So he makes you want to believe that the problems are fixable - with better linemen, weapons or coaching. The bit of success that he had in 2022, and remember, he only won three games against winning teams that year (Ravens, Jaguars and Vikings), was due to Daboll's effective scheming, Barkley's playmaking ability and DJ's above average running capacity. Once the league figured out how to stop him after the Eagles playoff blueprint, it was game over.
Can he still beat bad teams? Of course. But that solves nothing except delaying the emancipation of this franchise from quarterback hell.
For all the talk about how smart Daniel is, he doesn't seem to play football this way. Not only are his reads slow, but he has never seemed to be able to win the chess match at the line of scrimmage by moving people around to create match ups and beat the defense that way.
At this point of time its no longer worth discussing why, the reality is he isn't and shouldn't be a franchise QB, we need to move on.
Looks like Tarzan plays like Jane is over-used, but appropriate in this case.
For all the talk about how smart Daniel is, he doesn't seem to play football this way. Not only are his reads slow, but he has never seemed to be able to win the chess match at the line of scrimmage by moving people around to create match ups and beat the defense that way.
At this point of time its no longer worth discussing why, the reality is he isn't and shouldn't be a franchise QB, we need to move on.
I'd suggest that the quest for a complicated answer stems from the desire of some to avoid admitting that they simply saw things in Jones that were never there.
People fell HARD for Jones during the TB game in 2019, and have been making excuses for him ever since.
Breaking up is hard to do.
He doesnt. He frankly never did. The belief was that it could be trained into him.
Again, this isnt to kick him when he's down. When was he a good quarterback? It wasnt in college. He had moments as a rookie against bad teams, and he had moments in 2022.
Thats it.