jerseyshorejohnny
Well-known member
Wall Street Journal
College Football Overlooked Daniel Jones. Now He’s a Budding NFL Star
The obsession with finding the best quarterbacks produces a system that can fail to identify the best quarterbacks—missing prospects who blossom later on
By Andrew Beaton / Wall Street Journal
Sept. 30, 2019
Daniel Jones was so scrawny as a 15-year-old private-school quarterback that the best football programs around the country didn’t pay much attention to him. By the time he had morphed into a peanut-butter stuffed, 6-foot-5 high-school senior, almost all the college coaches tasked with recruiting the best players in the country had already moved on.
Jones wound up committing to Princeton before opting to become a walk-on at Duke, and now all of those coaches who ignored him should feel just a little obtuse: Jones is an emerging sensation for the New York Giants, who took him in the first round of the 2019 NFL draft to succeed Eli Manning. In two starts since taking over the job, Jones has led the Giants to two straight wins and rejuvenated a franchise that made the playoffs just once in the last seven years.
But Jones is far more than just the latest much-hyped savior for a New York football team. He’s the clearest example of how easily college coaches can flub the most important part of their jobs.
College coaches obsess over finding the best quarterbacks. They scour the most remote high schools and offer scholarships to players who are barely teenagers in a manic quest to lock down the most prized prospects at football’s most prized position as early as possible.
But this same frenzy also produces an odd inefficiency. The obsession with finding the best quarterbacks produces a system that can fail to identify the best quarterbacks. The reason: the quest to find the best players at the youngest age misses the players who blossom later on.
“It’s an interesting process,” Jones says. “I expect a lot of guys fall through the cracks because of it.”
There’s one thing crazier than legions of coaches completely missing someone who became the No. 6 pick in the NFL draft. They whiffed—twice—on the quarterback who became the No. 1 pick the year before. Baker Mayfield had to walk on at both Texas Tech and Oklahoma before he became universally acknowledged as one of the most talented passers on the planet.
What’s unusual is how often this happens. Josh Allen, the Bills quarterback and the No. 7 pick two years ago, wound up at a junior college and then Wyoming. Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz, the No. 2 pick in 2016, didn’t even make it to college football’s highest level, winding up at North Dakota State.
They all fell into college football’s blindspot, and nobody explains this better than Jones. He was young for his class, a late bloomer, and he suffered an injury that took him out of the camps where coaches scout en masse. “He might be an example of a guy who could’ve easily been lost in the shuffle,” said Steve Jones, his father.
Early in high school, when coaches hurriedly compete to get commitments from the top 14-year-olds, Jones wasn’t heralded at all. He wasn’t a five-star or even a four-star prospect, according to recruiting services. Most gave him precisely zero stars.
That’s because when he became the starting quarterback at Charlotte Latin High School in North Carolina as a sophomore, he was only 5-foot-11 and 148 lbs. There seemed to be more hope for him as a basketball prospect, a sport where he grew to be one of the best players on an AAU team coached by Jay Bilas that included Bilas’s son and Grant Williams, a first-round pick in last June’s NBA draft.
Except Jones wanted to play football, and by his junior year he had grown to 6-foot-2. Whenever college coaches came by, Larry McNulty, Jones’s high school coach, would unsuccessfully exhort them to take a closer look. Jones’s hands were enormous, his arm had uncanny strength and his shoulders were broad like his father’s—and he was likely to grow even more. But by then, most schools had already set their plans.
“I missed that wave of recruiting early that happens for a lot of guys,” Jones says. “That’s how I fell behind.”
Then he fell behind even further. In the winter of his junior year, he broke a bone in his wrist that took him out of showcases that would have been especially critical for him to show off his growth. He showed up to a basketball camp with a cast on the wrist—and he was the best player there anyway.
“If everyone was telling me he was a better quarterback than he was a basketball player, he was going to play in the NFL,” said Bilas, who ran the camp.
The only thing missing was a college football coach with the same notion. Once the wrist healed, Jones blitzed through nine football camps in 27 days hoping to catch the eye of a program that might have room for him.
Princeton coach Bob Surace was amazed when he saw Jones. He had gotten even bigger and was stunningly quick for his size. His arm had an unusual combination of strength and accuracy, and Princeton’s academics wouldn’t be a problem for him. Jones committed, and Surace believed he had uncovered a gem, which was reinforced when Jones threw for 43 touchdowns and ran for 10 more as a senior.
“Really, the only school that worried me,” Surace says, “was Duke.”
That is not typically a sentence uttered in college football. But Jones always had an affinity for Duke and its coach, David Cutcliffe, who coached both Eli and Peyton Manning when they were in college. Jones had also trained on the side with David Morris, who runs a quarterback development program and was Eli Manning’s backup in college under Cutcliffe.
Bilas put in a call, and so did others. That included McNulty, who sent along a highlight reel and begged the noted quarterback guru to take a look.
“Do not send this highlight film to another college,” Cutcliffe told McNulty.
There was one problem: Like everyone else, Duke had promised all of its scholarships already. Duke offered him what’s called a “gray shirt”—Jones would have to pay his own way until a scholarship opened up.
It didn’t take long for him to turn heads. Jones began as the quarterback on the scout team, which was problematic because he tore the first-string defense to shreds. He became the starter as a redshirt freshman, and had his best game in an upset win over a school that can pretty much handpick its players but never wanted him: Notre Dame.
Jones progressed even more over the next two years and even trained with Eli Manning, who annually flew to Duke to train with Cutcliffe. Then, when the Giants took him with the No. 6 pick in the draft, Jones became something besides Manning’s training partner: his replacement.
College Football Overlooked Daniel Jones. Now He’s a Budding NFL Star
The obsession with finding the best quarterbacks produces a system that can fail to identify the best quarterbacks—missing prospects who blossom later on
By Andrew Beaton / Wall Street Journal
Sept. 30, 2019
Daniel Jones was so scrawny as a 15-year-old private-school quarterback that the best football programs around the country didn’t pay much attention to him. By the time he had morphed into a peanut-butter stuffed, 6-foot-5 high-school senior, almost all the college coaches tasked with recruiting the best players in the country had already moved on.
Jones wound up committing to Princeton before opting to become a walk-on at Duke, and now all of those coaches who ignored him should feel just a little obtuse: Jones is an emerging sensation for the New York Giants, who took him in the first round of the 2019 NFL draft to succeed Eli Manning. In two starts since taking over the job, Jones has led the Giants to two straight wins and rejuvenated a franchise that made the playoffs just once in the last seven years.
But Jones is far more than just the latest much-hyped savior for a New York football team. He’s the clearest example of how easily college coaches can flub the most important part of their jobs.
College coaches obsess over finding the best quarterbacks. They scour the most remote high schools and offer scholarships to players who are barely teenagers in a manic quest to lock down the most prized prospects at football’s most prized position as early as possible.
But this same frenzy also produces an odd inefficiency. The obsession with finding the best quarterbacks produces a system that can fail to identify the best quarterbacks. The reason: the quest to find the best players at the youngest age misses the players who blossom later on.
“It’s an interesting process,” Jones says. “I expect a lot of guys fall through the cracks because of it.”
There’s one thing crazier than legions of coaches completely missing someone who became the No. 6 pick in the NFL draft. They whiffed—twice—on the quarterback who became the No. 1 pick the year before. Baker Mayfield had to walk on at both Texas Tech and Oklahoma before he became universally acknowledged as one of the most talented passers on the planet.
What’s unusual is how often this happens. Josh Allen, the Bills quarterback and the No. 7 pick two years ago, wound up at a junior college and then Wyoming. Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz, the No. 2 pick in 2016, didn’t even make it to college football’s highest level, winding up at North Dakota State.
They all fell into college football’s blindspot, and nobody explains this better than Jones. He was young for his class, a late bloomer, and he suffered an injury that took him out of the camps where coaches scout en masse. “He might be an example of a guy who could’ve easily been lost in the shuffle,” said Steve Jones, his father.
Early in high school, when coaches hurriedly compete to get commitments from the top 14-year-olds, Jones wasn’t heralded at all. He wasn’t a five-star or even a four-star prospect, according to recruiting services. Most gave him precisely zero stars.
That’s because when he became the starting quarterback at Charlotte Latin High School in North Carolina as a sophomore, he was only 5-foot-11 and 148 lbs. There seemed to be more hope for him as a basketball prospect, a sport where he grew to be one of the best players on an AAU team coached by Jay Bilas that included Bilas’s son and Grant Williams, a first-round pick in last June’s NBA draft.
Except Jones wanted to play football, and by his junior year he had grown to 6-foot-2. Whenever college coaches came by, Larry McNulty, Jones’s high school coach, would unsuccessfully exhort them to take a closer look. Jones’s hands were enormous, his arm had uncanny strength and his shoulders were broad like his father’s—and he was likely to grow even more. But by then, most schools had already set their plans.
“I missed that wave of recruiting early that happens for a lot of guys,” Jones says. “That’s how I fell behind.”
Then he fell behind even further. In the winter of his junior year, he broke a bone in his wrist that took him out of showcases that would have been especially critical for him to show off his growth. He showed up to a basketball camp with a cast on the wrist—and he was the best player there anyway.
“If everyone was telling me he was a better quarterback than he was a basketball player, he was going to play in the NFL,” said Bilas, who ran the camp.
The only thing missing was a college football coach with the same notion. Once the wrist healed, Jones blitzed through nine football camps in 27 days hoping to catch the eye of a program that might have room for him.
Princeton coach Bob Surace was amazed when he saw Jones. He had gotten even bigger and was stunningly quick for his size. His arm had an unusual combination of strength and accuracy, and Princeton’s academics wouldn’t be a problem for him. Jones committed, and Surace believed he had uncovered a gem, which was reinforced when Jones threw for 43 touchdowns and ran for 10 more as a senior.
“Really, the only school that worried me,” Surace says, “was Duke.”
That is not typically a sentence uttered in college football. But Jones always had an affinity for Duke and its coach, David Cutcliffe, who coached both Eli and Peyton Manning when they were in college. Jones had also trained on the side with David Morris, who runs a quarterback development program and was Eli Manning’s backup in college under Cutcliffe.
Bilas put in a call, and so did others. That included McNulty, who sent along a highlight reel and begged the noted quarterback guru to take a look.
“Do not send this highlight film to another college,” Cutcliffe told McNulty.
There was one problem: Like everyone else, Duke had promised all of its scholarships already. Duke offered him what’s called a “gray shirt”—Jones would have to pay his own way until a scholarship opened up.
It didn’t take long for him to turn heads. Jones began as the quarterback on the scout team, which was problematic because he tore the first-string defense to shreds. He became the starter as a redshirt freshman, and had his best game in an upset win over a school that can pretty much handpick its players but never wanted him: Notre Dame.
Jones progressed even more over the next two years and even trained with Eli Manning, who annually flew to Duke to train with Cutcliffe. Then, when the Giants took him with the No. 6 pick in the draft, Jones became something besides Manning’s training partner: his replacement.
