The New York Giants have not gotten off to a good start in the 2024 season. New York looked inept in a 28-6 Week 1 loss to Sam Darnold's Minnesota Vikings. The pressure is already starting to mount surrounding starting QB Daniel Jones. He struggled to move the offense down the field last week.
Kyle Rudolph can see that Jones is not the same player he was just two or three years ago.
Rudolph explained what's changed on Up & Adams.
“The Daniel Jones that I saw on Sunday in that game is not the Daniel Jones that I watched take them to the divisional round of the playoffs,” Rudolph said. “It’s not the guy that I played with when I was there for a year. Just his confidence looks completely destroyed and how can you blame him every time he goes out there he’s fighting for his life. I’ve said this multiple times when I’ve talked about DJ. Can we possibly protect him. They did the other part, they got him the play maker, they went out and got Malik Nabers in the draft this year.”
Rudolph played with Jones in 2021, a season when the Giants finished with a 4-13 record. Jones finished that season with 2,428 yards in 11 games with 10 touchdowns and seven interceptions, which is far from a great year.
“He’s got to get his confidence back,” Rudolph said. “I don’t know how they get it back, but like I said that guy that I watched on Sunday playing against my other former team, that wasn’t the guy that I know and he has the ability to be.”
Rudolph says he doesn’t see the confidence that Jones had when he played with him. Rudolph blames that on the Giants not protecting him with their offensive line.
Mike Lombardi claims that Hard Knocks exposed incompetence of Giants front office
Rudolph also points out that the Giants have done a good job of giving Jones weapons around him with the addition of Malik Nabers.
Mike Lombardi does not agree.
Lombardi pounded the team's front office on an appearance on the Bill Simmons podcast.
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“Because you think you’re good,” Lombardi said. “The answer to the questions is you think you’re good. You think what you’re doing is good. I think it exposed the Giants for incompetence. They had no plan, they had no model. That’s not how you run a team. I’m insulted as a personnel guy who spent my life in the NFL thinking that Joe Schoen did what most people do. That’s not how you run an NFL team. That’s if a guy was in a bar at Biggies in North Jersey, that’s how he would run the team, not how a professional would run the team.”
It is easy to see where Lombardi is coming from. The Giants have failed to field a competent team for several seasons in a row.
Arguably their biggest mistake came in 2022. The Giants made it to the playoffs and beat the Vikings in the wild card round. Then they handed Jones a four-year, $160 million contract extension.
This one mistake has handcuffed Jones to the Giants ever since, and is the reason why New York hasn't already moved on.
Giants fans may be happier if New York goes into rebuild mode this offseason.
