Darius Slayton won’t let perceptions of his lightning-rod quarterback Daniel Jones and the Giants’ offense be confused for the truth.
Take Wednesday’s joint practice with the Jets. He said there was context to the first-team offense not generating any downfield explosive pass plays:
Robert Saleh’s defense “played back” to prevent “anything deep” all afternoon and gave the Giants catch-and-run completions underneath. Slayton also felt they ran the ball well.
“They can walk away from yesterday, beat their chests, say they held us to whatever,” Slayton told the Daily News on Thursday. “But in a real game, at the end of the day, if they were to play how they did, we would have ran the ball for a bazillion yards and we would’ve won the game. And if they came up, they would’ve gotten beat [deep].”
So with Jets defenders sitting “deep every play,” Slayton said, was the oft-criticized Jones supposed to heave the ball downfield into coverage? Remember: his two interceptions last Saturday in Houston prompted a full week of slander on national shows.
“What do you want DJ to do?” Slayton said. “If DJ threw it up into double coverage, we’d be back on Sportscenter. But he checks it down and everybody’s like, ‘Oh man, we couldn’t get anything going today!’ It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
“Think about it,” Slayton explained, playfully animated. “If he’s out there and launched a double-covered contested [pass], people are like, ‘What is he looking at?!’ He checks it down to the running back, and it’s like, ‘Ah, man, the Giants couldn’t get anything going today.’ It’s like, ‘Alright, I guess.’”
Jones’ reputation was the core topic of Thursday’s conversation with Slayton, though, because it is at the center of a bizarre trend: In a sport where players typically operate under a code of silence and respect for each other’s livelihoods, many NFL players clearly are comfortable publicly mocking Jones.
Baker Mayfield told ‘GQ’ in 2019: ‘I cannot believe the Giants drafted Daniel Jones.’ San Francisco 49ers players called it “unbelievable” and “ridiculous” that Jones was making $40 million a year in the San Francisco Chronicle last season.
Former Vikings corner Patrick Peterson said this spring that there is “nothing impressive” about Jones. And then Jets corner Sauce Gardner became the latest player to throw shade Jones’ way on Wednesday by stammering and smiling through an awkward and limited compliment.
Gardner later posted on ‘X’ that he had been “distracted” mid-interview. Still, it was clear the Jets corner was holding back something that was making him smile.
“I don’t know what his intent was,” Slayton, 27, said. “I think I saw a tweet [in which] he said maybe he got distracted or something like that and that’s why he paused. But whatever it was, regardless … it’s easy to say negative things once there’s a negative narrative around a person. But it doesn’t always make it — well, in this case it doesn’t make it true. Nor does he see him on a day-in, day-out basis.”
Slayton said spending six years on the same Giants team has taught him “you might have an impression of somebody” when they are playing elsewhere, but “then you get around them on a day-to-day basis, practice in and out, and you’re like, ‘Dang.’
“Now some dudes you’re like, ‘Dang, he really isn’t that good,’” Slayton admitted. “But there are some dudes where you’re like, ‘Dang, this guy’s way better than I thought, and circumstances or whatever led it to not be [better] wherever he was at.
“I feel like anytime you’re commenting on other players, especially if you haven’t really done any homework on said person — and by homework I mean actually watch film, not just read numbers and looked at clips on Twitter — it’s kinda hard to justify any opinion you might have,” he said.
So why is Jones such a popular target of criticism from his peers?
“I think because we play in prime-time a lot, we’re media-covered a lot, we’re the Giants,” said Slayton, who was drafted to the Giants with Jones in 2019. “If we were the Jaguars — like you don’t hear anybody say anything about Trevor Lawrence. Or [Chargers QB] Justin Herbert, for that matter. Matter of fact, if you ask most people about Justin Herbert, they’d probably tell you that he’s a top five quarterback, but under what logic? Can you really make a case for that, that he’s a top five quarterback?
“You just believe he’s capable of that, because you see the big arm, basically that he’s big, he’s tall, he has a rocket of an arm,” the wide receiver added. “You assume his processing is good. You assume he’s smart and all these things. You don’t actually know, though.”
Peterson’s remarks were particularly ridiculous in Slayton’s opinion because Jones hung 55 points on Minnesota in two 2022 meetings. In a 31-24 road playoff win over the Vikings, in fact, Jones became the first QB in NFL playoff history to have 300-plus passing yards, two TD passes and 70-plus rushing yards in the same game.
“When Patrick Peterson said the thing a couple of months ago in the offseason, it was like, you can say that, but … we played him twice,” Slayton said. “Once [they] gave up a playoff record. And the first time we didn’t lose because we couldn’t score.
“So two times you had a chance to play somebody that you allegedly say couldn’t do such and so forth, and then went out there and twice had a chance to stop them, and they went out and did it,” he continued. “At some point it’s like you’re full of s–-t. Either you’re full of crap or you don’t know what you’re talking about. One of the two.
Jones said Peterson’s diss of Jones was “like a boxer talking about this guy doesn’t have any punching power, and then you get in there and he knocks you out twice.
“You’re gonna keep saying he has no punching power, but you’ve been to sleep twice?” he laughed. “It makes no sense. It’s illogical.”
Slayton said Jones, the Cowboys’ Dak Prescott and the Eagles’ Jalen Hurts are “probably the most scrutinized quarterbacks in the NFL.”
He said “of course” Jones’ $40 million-a-year contract is one reason he gets targeted, but there is a double standard when it comes to criticizing the Giants QB for that and not others.
“The thing with the money is, that’s what quarterbacks get paid,” Slayton said. “You don’t see anybody talking about Derek Carr [who averages $37.5 million per year]. And I actually think Derek Carr’s a good quarterback. But I’m just saying, what did the Saints do?
“Derek Carr could do something bad three weeks in a row and you would hear nothing about it,” Slayton continued. “I don’t even know what he did this preseason. I don’t know if he’s played good or bad this preseason. But DJ is on Good Morning Football. It’s just not the same. But it is what it is.”
There is only one way a player can change the perception of him when he’s down anyway.
“Winning,” Slayton said.
TOMMY TIME
Tommy DeVito is expected to start Saturday’s preseason finale and play the full game for the Giants against the Jets. Head coach Brian Daboll wouldn’t divulge his lineup, but Thursday’s practice seemingly indicated that he plans to rest his starters and play the backups — as he has done the previous two seasons.
