Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner went viral this week for his awkward attempt to come up with things to say about Giants quarterback Daniel Jones in the wake of Wednesday’s joint practice, but Jones’s teammate Darius Slayton didn’t have such a hard time.
Slayton has been the Giants’ No. 1 receiver for most of Jones’s time with the team and said he doesn’t “know what his intent was” in regard to Gardner, but made it clear that he thinks there’s too much negativity around Jones in general. He noted the Jets defense played deep throughout that practice, which led Jones to check balls down, and said Jones would be crushed for forcing passes into coverage if he’d done the opposite.
That’s an example of how Slayton believes a narrative has been built around Jones that doesn’t match reality.
“It’s easy to say negative things once there’s a negative narrative around a person,” Slayton said, via Pat Leonard of the New York Daily News. 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 went on to say that he feels Jones is held to a different standard than quarterbacks like Trevor Lawrence and Justin Herbert because the Giants are more squarely in the eyes of the media and there’s a point to be made about how different narratives are built around different players. The results are also the results, however, and neither the Giants nor Jones have done much to impress since Jones arrived in 2019.
The exception was 2022’s trip to the divisional round of the playoffs and a repeat of that might be necessary for Jones to have a chance to continue adding to the narrative of his Giants career in 2025.