LAS VEGAS — Despite a bumpy start to his career, the Giants stuck with Phil Simms and it led to them winning a Super Bowl. Simms believes the Giants should show the same patience with current quarterback Daniel Jones.
But he understands it won’t be easy for anyone involved.
“Unless you are Patrick Mahomes and a few other people, you are going to go through these periods and you just have to fight,” Simms, an analyst for CBS, said at the network’s media availability at Super Bowl LVIII on Tuesday. “Would I have anything to tell Daniel Jones? ‘Hey man, buckle up. It’s gonna be rough. Just show how tough you are and do it and just keep working. That’s all you can do.’”
Simms bemoaned the league-wide lack of patience for quarterback development these days and pointed to a number of other examples where teams gave up on players too soon. He is concerned the Bears are about to do that with Justin Fields. Simms certainly has a soft spot for the issue since he came to the Giants as a first-round pick in 1979 but in his first five years he made just 34 starts due to injuries (including missing the entire 1982 campaign with a knee tear). He went 14-20 in those starts and threw 39 touchdowns with 43 interceptions.
Simms insisted that in today’s climate the Giants would have dumped him.
“They would have moved on,” he said. “You got hurt. Get out. Not ‘get out,’ but that’s just the way it would be. Really the media and the fans base would drive it a lot. They tried to do it to me anyway.”
Simms said several factors allowed him to remain in New York.
“First off I was a high draft pick so that helped me a lot,” he said. “And two… I was better than the other guys. That’s why they kept me. I never walked on the field and said ‘Wow, this guy throws it better than me.’ Maybe I was arrogant, which I was at times, of course, but I think that’s another reason.”
Even when he was hurt, he said, he was able to show spurts of quality…
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