Giants’ Daniel Jones can look to Jared Goff for redemption blueprint

Daniel Jones can look across at Jared Goff during these joint practices with the Lions on Monday and Tuesday and dream the Impossible Dream. 

Goff was the first-overall pick in the 2016 NFL Draft before Rams head coach Sean McVay surrendered him in the blockbuster 2021 trade for Matthew Stafford. Motown was gripped with buyers remorse when Stafford led the Rams to their Super Bowl LVI championship over the Bengals, while Goff started slowly in Detroit. 

“I feel like he has to step up more than he has,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said early in the 2021 season. “He needs to help us.” 

Then came last season. Ford Field chanted Goff’s name as he beat the Rams for the Lions’ first playoff win in 32 years and led them to the NFC Championship game. He was flabbergasted hearing his name chanted at a Red Wings game. His last two years: 59 touchdowns, 19 interceptions. 

“It means a whole lot to this city,” Goff would say. 

For now, of course, it is nothing more than a pipe dream for Daniel Jones. It seems like an eternity ago when Jones, with his right thumb in the air, could bathe in a curtain call under a shower of “Daniel Jones, Daniel Jones” and “MVP, MVP” chants at the end of the 2022 Giants’ 38-10 rout of the Colts to clinch their first playoff berth since 2016. 

“I told him I loved him, man,” Saquon Barkley said afterward. 

Barkley also would say: “Toughest quarterback in the league.” 

So much has changed from that day, and from the day Jones shredded the Vikings on the road for the Giants’ first playoff win in 11 seasons. 

Jones paid an immediate price for his $40 million contract and continues to pay it to this day. 

He endured a nightmare 2023 season behind a nightmare offensive line with a neck and a knee that betrayed him and wouldn’t let him start more than six games. 

He endured a nightmare draft season when general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll made an attempt to secure their Quarterback of the Future. 

There was even speculation that Drew Lock could steal his job. 

It would have been organizational negligence, given Jones’ troubling injury resume, sobering play (2 TDs, 6 INTs) and unpredictable progress from his grueling torn ACL rehab, had the Giants not implemented a contingency plan. 

“Hard Knocks” on HBO? 

Hard Knocks on Daniel Jones. 

Jones knocked his rehab out of the park and put to rest any notion that he would not be Daboll’s starting quarterback at the start of training camp, never mind when the regular season begins. 

Now, of course, the real rehabilitation must begin for him. 

The expectation for him is what it must be for the franchise quarterback: 

Stay healthy. 

Throw touchdown passes. 

Win games. 

Or lose your dream job. 

And the steepest hill of all to climb: remind the franchise that you can deliver a Super Bowl. 

John Mara believed that Daniel Jones was That Guy two years ago and wants so badly to believe it again. 

Jones, with no guaranteed money in 2025, has no excuses. Malik Nabers is his first true No. 1 receiver. The offensive line has been upgraded. Daboll is now the play caller. 

He can no longer use Barkley, gone to Philadelphia, as a crutch. Games will be in his hands. He must get the ball out of his hands and make the right decisions and throw with accuracy. He cannot afford the fumbles and interceptions that have been a bugaboo for him. 

“I believe in Daniel with everything I got,” Wan’Dale Robinson told The Post. “At the end of the day, it’s everybody else’s opinion on whether they want to believe in him or not, but I have all the confidence in that man and the way he works. I feel like he’s the right quarterback for us.” 

He was Danny Dimes in 2022, after the Giants declined his fifth-year option. 

He doesn’t have the elite offensive line that Goff has had. He doesn’t have David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs behind him. He will need Nabers to be his Amon-Ra St. Brown and Robinson to be a young Sterling Shepard and Theo Johnson to be his Sam LaPorta. 

So yes, the odds are against him. It doesn’t mean he shouldn’t allow himself to look across at Jared Goff and see a quarterback who got up off the mat and won over a skeptical team and town.