
Giants’ Jayden Daniels laments may become inescapable
NY Post
He was 29 years old, in his ninth NFL season, and he looked more weary and fatigued than he should have been.
Justin Tuck had just come off the field having, for the first time, chased around Robert Griffin III. The Giants won and Tuck had a sack. Yet, he was gloomy and oh-so concerned on this October day in 2012 about what his football life would entail if this was going to be a twice-a-year assignment.
“I’m pretty mad at the football gods for putting him in the NFC East,” Tuck said. “A quarterback like that, he’s different from Eli [Manning] and those guys. It’s just hard to game-plan that guy. He takes away from your enthusiasm for the game a little bit when you play a play perfectly, and he still has 4.3 speed to outrun guys and make plays. I don’t think there’s anybody in the league just like him.”
Fast-forward to this Sunday at Northwest Stadium and what Dexter Lawrence might be saying after facing Jayden Daniels for the first time. Once more, there is a Washington quarterback with ridiculous physical gifts and fast, crazy legs in the same division as the Giants.
Griffin was the second-overall pick in the 2012 draft, and 12 years later, Daniels was also a No. 2 pick of the same franchise — both were Heisman Trophy winners — and the hype might be even greater this time around, as nowadays hype always seems louder, bolder and more shrill.
“I guess I ain’t thought about it like that,’’ Lawrence told The Post Wednesday after practice. “Our job is to get to the quarterback and stop him. You see a lot of mobile quarterbacks nowadays. Having a guy with speed, it’s kind of normal, you learn and adapt to contain a quarterback with elite speed like that.’’

The problem is the draft picks. That’s what makes Mikal Bridges’ up-and-down season a little extra problematic. Picks are always the great unknown. Picks are an abstract. Picks can be as valuable as your imagination allows them to be before the picks are actually … well, picked, until you know for sure, tangibly, the flesh-and-blood yield.