It’s just a quirk, really, a coincidence, a random bit of serendipity. Intellectually, we all know this. Intellectually, we know that the list of have-to-have essentials the NFL schedule-maker considered before putting the vast maze together didn’t go like this:
1. Schedule the Chiefs, at home, on the first day of the year.
2. Let Daniel Jones start his comeback against the Vikings.
But it’s still a nice place to start for Jones, who has made the long journey back from knee surgery, endured the lonely hours of rehab and the lonelier moments of doubt and fear and uncertainty. Jones’ season lasted six games last year, and, speaking frankly, they weren’t terribly hopeful games: two touchdowns and six picks, a rating of 70.5, a 1-5 record.
But that all vanishes thanks to the magic of opening day. Sunday afternoon, 1 o’clock, Giants Stadium, Jones gets a fresh start, and he gets to make that fresh start against a team he twice picked apart in the space of three weeks two years ago. In Week 16 against the Vikings on Christmas Eve, he was brilliant in a 27-24 defeat, 30-for-42 for 334 yards, one touchdown and one pick.
But he was even better in the first round of the playoffs in front of 66,721 Minnesotans at U.S. Bank Park who screamed themselves hoarse for three hours in an effort to get to Jones, and they never could.
You have to believe that the game tape of Giants 31, Vikings 24 and, more specifically, Jones’ maestro-like performance (24-for-35 with two TDs and no picks; 78 more yards on 17 carries) helped carry the day when Joe Schoen decided to sign him to a four-year, $160 million deal — essentially picking him over Saquon Barkley as the franchise cornerstone going forward.
Last season was a waste.
So the rest of Daniel Jones’ career begins now, 1 o’clock, Sunday, MetLife. And he gets the Vikings. As welcome-backs go, that’s just about as much as he could ask for, at least in terms of muscle memory.
“I’m feeling good, I’m ready to go, excited to get out there,” Jones said last week. “We’ve got high expectations of what we can be as a group on offense. I think based on the work we’ve put in and progress we’ve made, we expect to be a good unit, score a lot of points and attack a defense a lot of different ways.”
That starts with the quarterback. That starts with Jones. Both head coach Brian Daboll and offensive coordinator Mike Kafka have said the Giants are going to be more aggressive in their downfield looks, which only makes perfect sense given the skills and the potential of new crown jewel of the receiving corps, Malik Nabers.
“Big plays help,” Daboll said. “You skip third downs. You move the ball a little bit further down the field. There is less plays in a drive. All those things happen. You’ve got to be really, really efficient on long drives.”
And they believe they’ve seen enough out of Jones this summer.
“He’s always had a great work ethic,” Kafka said. “That’s not something that’s ever going to change with him. From Day 1, being in the film room, in the weight room, those are things that just kind of are in his blood. The work-ethic part of it, it’s really never been an issue.”
Neither has the level of Jones’ likeability. From the start it’s been impossible to not want Jones to develop into the true heir to Eli Manning, the role the Giants drafted him to be. At his best, he has honored that comparison.
We spotlighted the two Vikings games from 2022, but Jones was terrific all year. The Giants were the happy surprise in all of football that year, and Jones captained the ship.
Now he has Nabers, which ought to make him ready to report to the stadium at 12:01 Sunday morning. That’s the kind of potential weapon quarterbacks dream about. Especially one who hasn’t thrown a pass that mattered in the past 338 days.
“I feel like we’re in a good spot,” Jones said. “I think we’re confident. We’ve had a good camp, we’re prepared and we’ve got to go out and execute. I think it’s about taking the work that you’ve put in since this spring, and translating that to the field.”
If that happens, it may well start to feel like 2022 all over again. If you are a Giants fan, that’s the only way to root.
