Daniel Jones' Fumble Issues Date Back to College

Remember when people thought Daniel Jones was the Giants' messiah? Yeah, that didn't last long. Now the world found out about a major flaw with Jones' game that Duke fans have known about for years - poor ball control.

In just eight appearances in 2019, Daniel Jones has fumbled 13 times, the highest total in the league, with eight of them lost. Normally with a rookie quarterback, issues such as this iron themselves out over time, but in Jones' case, his ball-handling seems to be deteriorating with each passing week. In the past three games, Jones fumbled the ball an astounding seven times (one of which he himself recovered).

Even coming into this week, he stood tied for the league lead in turnovers among quarterbacks with Tampa Bay's Jameis Winston. Today's game against the Jets has to mark a low point, however. Against a defense which surrendered 26 points to an actively-tanking team from Miami last week, Daniel Jones has fumbled the ball away three times, the last of which was returned for a touchdown by Jamal Adams.

Giants offensive coordinator Mike Shula claims that the team's coaching staff emphasized ball security in practice drills they ran with Jones leading up to this week's game. The question is: what happened?

This is not a new phenomenon for Jones, either - in his three seasons at Duke, he fumbled 19 times, losing 13 of them, a stat that may refuel the initial skepticism Giants fans had at his first-round draft selection.

Giants head coach Pat Shurmur brought Jones in as the starting quarterback to bring the kind of jolt to their offense that previous starter Eli Manning could not. While he has done that at points, his fumbling issues could ultimately make the highlight plays moot.