The New York Giants drafted the heir to Eli Manning as they took Duke’s Daniel Jones at No. 6 overall. It was the right position, but was it the right player?
There was little doubt that the New York Giants were going to draft a quarterback and throughout much of the pre-draft process, the dots were connected between them and Ohio State’s Dwayne Haskins. However, the winds started to shift over the past week and Daniel Jones started to emerge as a possibility.
The Duke prospect was expected to be one of the first quarterbacks taken off the class, but leaping over Haskins and Missouri’s Drew Lock seems to be quite the climb. Much of that has to do with the belief that Jones fits the offense better than these other quarterbacks do.
Jones has been compared recently to both Peyton Manning and current Giants starter Eli Manning. This is unsurprising as Jones worked under head coach David Cutcliffe with the Blue Devils, who has a great relationship with the Manning family.
This should help the transition process as New York will expect Manning to serve as a mentor to Jones for the next year or two before they make the move to the younger quarterback.
In his career, Jones completed 59.9 percent of his passes for 8,201 yards with 52 touchdowns against nine interceptions. This past season, he had 22 of those touchdowns against nine picks — none of these numbers come close to the gaudy stats put up by Haskins at Ohio State.
Still, there are many who believe he was hurt by the roster around him as Duke doesn’t boast a bevy of potential NFL stars.
Time will tell if this was the right pick, but it feels like the Giants got the position right, but made the wrong move by not selecting Dwayne Haskins. In a vacuum, Jones is a good player but he’s going to be compared to Haskins for the rest of his career. That may be hard for a guy who many had as a day three pick.
Grade: D