Why We Shouldn't Be Too Concerned (Yet) About the Giants Passing Offense

The Giants averaged 5.9 yards on pass routes in the preseason finale. But here's why we might want to wait before panicking about the state of the passing game.

Author:
Patricia Traina
Publish date:
Sep 3, 2021 11:13 AM EDT

Will New York Giants offensive coordinator Jason Garrett ever open up the passing offense?

If one goes by the preseason finale against the Patriots and the fact that starting quarterback Daniel Jones saw his pass targets average 5.9 yards on pass routes, the answer doesn’t look promising.

The question was put to offensive coordinator Jason Garrett, who said, “I think when you're talking about offensive football, you want to be able to run the ball, and you want to be able to throw the ball. It starts there. You want to be balanced.

“Then, you want to be able to run it and throw it different ways. You want to be able to throw it quickly in the intermediate range and then throw the ball down the field.”

But here’s why it might just be a little premature to panic over that 5.9 average—and why it’s not necessarily the fault of the offensive line.

It’s worth noting that Jones’s only preseason snaps were without his top deep threats—receivers Kenny Golladay and Kadarius Toney and tight end Kyle Rudolph.

Jones also lost Slayton and Engram for part of his snaps to injuries, leaving him with only one real deep threat: Dante Pettis, a guy with whom Jones didn’t get much work during the summer since Pettis dealt with an injury for most of the summer.

Jones averaged 2.51 seconds to throw the ball in the preseason, the lowest of the Giants quarterbacks this summer, and average 2.75 seconds from dropback to sack, which is a pretty high number. Oh, and Jones completed 10 of 12 pass attempts despite any issues his offensive line might have had, and his average time to throw was 3.25 seconds in the preseason.

If we use last year’s regular-season stats for quarterbacks and deep balls, Tom Brady, the league leader in deep pass attempts (91), averaged 5.68 deep pass attempts (20+ yards) per game, which is on the high side.

With that number as a benchmark, if we cut that in half (since Jones only played one half of football), that comes out to 2.84 deep pass attempts per game. And Jones, according to Pro Football Focus, took one deep shot in his preseason snaps—a pass which he completed for 23 yards, by the way.

The original point is that quarterbacks don’t take as many deep shots in a game as they might with the shorter and intermediate routes.

To be clear, this isn’t to suggest that the Giants’ offensive line deserves a pass—the struggles of the unit were very much a thing and are a big concern with the regular season just nine days away. Even Garrett acknowledged the offensive line needs to be better.

“We have to get better,” he said. “We have to be able to give our quarterback more time to throw the ball down the field, but we also need to be efficient.”

But any panic about Jones’s average depth of target based on that one half of preseason action needs to be tapered off given the way the preseason finale played out and the personnel Jones had to throw to.