Daniel Jones’ stunning ineptitude has made for a massive Giants mess

There was so much alarm and genuine bewilderment that Daniel Jones could embark on a new season and look so bad, so overmatched and so dysfunctional that it caused those who have followed his career — inside and outside the building — to try to figure out what the heck happened out there. 

To be clear, the expectations were not exactly soaring for the 27-year-old quarterback, coming off ACL surgery and a brutal 2023 cameo. There was the anticipation that Jones, in his third year in Brian Daboll’s offensive system and with a brand-new play-making toy in Malik Nabers, would look capable, competent and in control of what he wanted to get accomplished, without any preconceived notions that his performance would rise to the level of greatness or any real superlative distinction. 

What the Giants and their instantly horrified fans saw in the season-opening 28-6 loss to the Vikings was the shell of a quarterback who was able to limit mistakes and win games as recently as 2022. Jones had difficulty in every facet, checking off no boxes as he bounced the ball or watched it sail over and behind his targets. From bad to worse in a three-hour first test that he failed, miserably. 

It looked as if this were a player in regression. 

“Yeah, it did,’’ Brian Baldinger, a former NFL offensive lineman and now an NFL Network analyst, told The Post on Tuesday. “I don’t want to use the term ‘shot fighter,’ I don’t want to say that, because that’s personal. But he didn’t look like an advanced quarterback that’s been in the league and can play with some awareness and anticipation. Even when he knew where to go with the ball he wasn’t putting it in the right place. 

“This is the third year in the offense, there shouldn’t be a whole lot of thinking. He should know exactly what he’s looking at here and where to go with the ball and where the safety valves are. All that stuff should be second nature to him. He should be very comfortable and he didn’t look comfortable in this offense.’’ 

There is no need to revisit the selection of Jones as the No. 6 overall pick in the 2019 draft. That decision was made by the former general manager, Dave Gettleman. The first major decision made by Joe Schoen when he was hired was to decline picking up Jones’ fifth-year option for a fully guaranteed $22.3 million for the 2022 season. Go prove you deserve to get paid, Schoen said, without saying it. Jones proceeded to stay healthy for a full season for the first time in his career, lead the entire NFL with a league-low interception-rate of 1.1 percent (five in 472 pass attempts) and direct the Giants to their second winning record in the past 10 years. He excelled on the road in Minneapolis as the Giants won their first playoff game since the Super Bowl run after the 2011 season. 

The Giants were sold — not that Jones was the be-all and end-all at the position, but that he was worth investing middle-tier quarterback money for the next couple of years. That is why they structured the four-year, $160 million the way they did, allowing them to get out of the contract after the 2024 season with a dead-money cap hit of $22.2 million — not insignificant, but not backbreaking. 

The Giants were banking on Jones’ potential growth, believing Daboll and his system could get the most out of him. 

“Daniel did have a good year and he’ll be the first to tell you there’s still a lot of meat left on the bone and a lot of room for improvement,’’ Schoen said at the time of the signing. 

Since Jones got that contract, there is not enough meat on that bone to feed a pigeon. He is 1-6 as a starter, with two touchdown passes and eight interceptions. He has thrown more pick-six interceptions (three) than he has thrown scoring passes to his own team (two). 

There was the horrid offensive line play early in 2023 before he tore up his right knee in Week 9. There was a lack of playmakers, a failing that Nabers is supposed to cure. But the stark and stunning ineptitude in Jones’ performance has been overwhelming. This is a guy who as a rookie threw 24 touchdown passes and 12 interceptions and ever since getting paid is incapable of running a coherent passing attack? 

“The injuries probably have affected him mentally to where he does not trust the O-line,’’ an NFL defensive assistant told The Post. “He’s lacking some real trust in the people around him. 

“When a quarterback gets beat up, he starts to rush his throws. He starts to look at the rush instead of looking down the field. The first thing you do is lock in on your first read. The one thing that really changes is your decision-making. It’s not something that just happened now. It started a few years ago.’’ 

This was supposed to be fixed, with three new starters on the offensive line this season. The season opener was not encouraging for the newly assembled group. Left tackle Andrew Thomas had the best pass-blocking grade in the league, assigned by Pro Football Focus, and his overall grade of 76.6 was far better than left guard Jon Runyan Jr. (59.0), center John Michael Schmitz (52.2), right guard Greg Van Roten (46.6) and right tackle Jermaine Eluemunor (64.9). 

“The offensive line was awful,’’ Baldinger said. “They were just awful. Runyan was bad, Van Roten was bad, Eluemunor was OK, Andrew Thomas was solid, but as a group they were bad so they couldn’t really run it.’’ 

Jones against the Vikings went 22-for-42 for 186 yards and two interceptions — one returned 10 yards for a touchdown by linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel. Trailing the entire second half, he was under pressure on 36.7 percent of his dropbacks — 21st in the NFL in Week 1, according to NextGen Stats. He threw into a tight window on only 9.5 percent of his throws — the sixth-fewest in the league — meaning his completion percentage should have been much higher. He threw into tight windows 14.7 percent of the time in 2022 and 10.8 percent of the time in 2023. There were more openings for Jones in this opener and he could not find them. 

One more from NexGen Stats: Jones’ completion percentage over expected was minus-16.5 percent — only Jordan Love of the Packers was worse in Week 1. This is the difference between a quarterback’s actual completion percentage and expected completion percentage, controlling for the level of difficulty of each pass. In 2022, this was plus-1.2 percent for Jones and in 2023 it was plus-0.5 percent. 

Translation: Jones was truly bad to start this season. 

“Daniel Jones, the one thing he doesn’t do, he does not throw the ball with any anticipation,’’ Baldinger said. “And so he’s too late, and that’s why he’s running. The ball has to be out. Not every pass, but passes to the sideline, the guy’s making a break, the ball’s got to come out. And he’s got to be accurate with it and he wasn’t accurate with it and he didn’t throw with anticipation. That’s on him.’’ 

Baldinger was not impressed by Daboll’s approach in the opener, with the usage too often of two and three tight ends and the lack of any deep balls down the field. 

“It’s the same thing they were doing under Pat Shurmur,’’ Baldinger said. “They don’t feel like they can move the line of scrimmage, they’ve got all these tight ends, they’re not really doing anything. The play design was poor. You can only throw so many hitch-screens to the outside. They didn’t take one deep shot down the field. Not one shot to Malik or Jalin [Hyatt], nothing? Not one deep ball.’’ 

Daboll also did Jones no favors by calling for too much pre-snap movement, according to former NFL quarterback Chase Daniel, currently an analyst for Fox Sports. 

“It almost looked like it confused Daniel Jones,’’ Daniel told The Post. “He was thinking too much about shifts and motions and [identifying the Mike linebacker] that he forgot the play. Sometimes you have to keep it simple and that was anything but simple.’’ 

Pointing out all the mishaps is the easier part. Figuring out why a once-functional quarterback has morphed into a Giants mess is the more difficult assignment. 

Lest we forget, Jones heard all summer how his own team wanted to trade up in the draft to replace him. Thank you, “Hard Knocks.’’ Thus, Jones knows he is on borrowed time with the franchise. This has to play games in his mind, doesn’t it? 

“Is it inside his head that the organization isn’t really behind him?’’ Baldinger said. “It’s one thing if the fans aren’t behind you. If that happens, you’ve got to fight that. But can you fight an organization that was desperately trying to replace you and you know that? Maybe some guys can just say, ‘Screw it, I’m just gonna show everybody.’ 

“I want to say Daniel’s that guy. But I don’t know if he can, because most people can’t.’’ 

Whatever it is, the Giants are in for a long, long season unless Jones figures it out. 

— Additional reporting by Ryan Dunleavy