The Giants made the decision to move on from Jameis Winston as their starter and give 3rd-year quarterback J.J. McCarthy an opportunity beginning this weekend against the Texans.
The move makes sense. Winston has lived up to his reputation, providing excitement and positive plays for both the Giants and their opponents. But he’s missed too many throws, made too many bad decisions, and it’s time for the G-Men to see what they have in McCarthy for the rest of the season.
Not to mention, I think McCarthy showed enough in his first real action with the Giants (243 yards in the 4th quarter alone) to warrant them taking a nice long look at him.
So what do the Giants have in McCarthy? If last week’s game against the Saints was any indication, he unsurprisingly still has the same positives and negatives that have defined his game since college.
We’ll take this breakdown sequentially and work through his key plays from the 4th quarter.
On this first play, McCarthy seemed to get stuck on his first read, the two-receiver route combo to his right. Neither of his receivers were really open, and that unfortunately really ended the play for him. He stuck with the read and threw the ball out of bounds instead of coming back to the middle, where he would have had Malik Nabers wide open:
As you can see from the end zone angle, there was time and space in the pocket for him to move to his next read and hit Nabers:
Plays like this do need to be taken with a grain of salt. This was McCarthy’s first real action of the season, in a game where he sat on the bench for the first 3 quarters, and is playing in a relatively new offense. But that’s definitely the type of play he needs to be able to hit next week and beyond.
This next throw was the interception. Again, I’m not going to react too harshly to this one. He seemed to just not be on the same page as his receiver, rookie Malachi Fields:
McCarthy thought based on the coverage that Fields would sit inside. Fields took it outside:
That’s an example of two players not being on the same page more than it is an egregious error, which makes sense given that they haven’t played much together.
This next play is a great illustration of both what McCarthy can do and where he’s lacking precision to his game. He put this ball over the underneath coverage for a big chunk of yards. But he also put it behind his receiver and made it a more difficult catch than it needed to be: