Tom Rock: 'The Jameis Winston Experience' is taking the Giants by storm; hop along for the ride!
Jameis Winston of the Giants reacts after a successful two-point conversion in the third quarter against the Arizona Cardinals at MetLife Stadium on Sunday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
We all know what the phrase “The Jameis Winston Experience” means. And if you didn’t before watching the Giants-Cardinals game on Sunday, you certainly do now.
It’s the Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride of the NFL, a herky-jerky roller coaster of emotions and outcomes that churns out seemingly random plays at unexpected times.
Think he’s incapable of completing a pass? Watch him scramble and find rookie Malachi Fields in the end zone or zip seeds to Malik Nabers and Theo Johnson for touchdowns.
Ready for him to settle in and play well? Here come those throws that sail, short hop or, worse yet, get picked off.
You know who else knows what it means? Jameis Winston himself.
Oh, he hears those words quite a bit. Has for a long time. He heard them on Sunday along with the early booing from the fans at MetLife Stadium, and even a few chants of “J.J.” pleading for a bullpen appearance by the recently acquired J.J. McCarthy.
“I think it’s a thing that people say and they laugh and they joke about it,” Winston said. “But at the end of the day, my desire is to continue to get better and be the best I can be. That’s what I am focused on, not an ‘experience.’ ”
Too bad. Because whatever this thing is called, whatever else anyone wants to say about it, it’s turning out to be fun. It’s exciting. And darned if it isn’t working.
On Sunday, it led to a thrilling 36-24 win over the Cardinals. It gave the Giants (3-1) two victories in their two games with Winston as their starter since Jaxson Dart was lost for the season with a knee injury (even though both wins required opposing quarterbacks to have their own woeful experiences late in those games on potential game-winning passes toward the end zone that were intercepted).
The notoriously inconsistent Winston hadn’t won two consecutive starts in the same season since 2021, when he won three straight for the Saints. It has allowed the Giants to open the season with three straight home victories for the first time since 2008.
And it has the team sitting alone in first place in the NFC East after the Eagles lost to the Rams on Sunday.
It’s the first time the Giants have had sole possession of that status since Week 11 of the 2015 season, when they were on their bye with a 5-5 mark.
Experience that!
For someone who has been a perennial playoff contender most of his career, being 3-1 probably doesn’t carry much weight for John Harbaugh, who walked around last week wearing a T-shirt that said “1-0” to reinforce the goal of the record he wants in each individual game.
But these aren’t the Ravens. These are the Giants. And for them, these are significant accomplishments.
“Keep believing, keep doing. Keep believing, keep doing,” Harbaugh said. “That’s what winning teams do.”
The Giants? Jameis Winston’s Giants? They’re one of those now. That’s not something they are striving toward, it’s how they currently identify themselves . . . and they can point to the standings to prove it.
Harbaugh was asked if this was a “character-building” win and instead chose to call it “character-reflecting.” He was asked if the Giants are learning how to win. “I think they showed us how to win,” he said.
Maybe this is what happens when the Jameis Winston Experience meets the John Harbaugh Effect.
The fact that this particular victory came on a day when the Giants honored the 1986 champs with a ceremony to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the team’s first Super Bowl title certainly resonated.
“It makes me really proud that with what they represented, they could watch a football game like that,” Harbaugh said. “It wasn’t the most beautiful game, but it was a winning game in terms of the heart and determination and handling the pressure and all those things. I’m kind of proud of that.”
Harbaugh did not shrug off the feats the Giants have performed during the first quarter or so of this schedule, a period in which they lost their starting quarterback and their best pass rusher to season-ending injuries and had to tear up their philosophies on both the offensive and defensive sides to compensate.
“It’s an opportunity,” he said of being atop the standings. “The idea is to get the lead and extend the lead. That’s the idea, in a game and during the season. We’re in good position for four games in, but it’s only four games in. It gives us a great opportunity to go down to Washington [in Week 5] and play our best football game.”
That hasn’t happened yet. With Winston and his history at quarterback, there is a strong chance it might never happen.
As Harbaugh succinctly said: “I thought he played well, except for the turnovers . . . Those are throws he can make in his sleep.”
When he’s awake is when they seem to be troublesome.
But the good has outweighed the bad, both from Winston and the Giants as a whole.
“The feeling around the team is celebrate today,” Winston said, “but we want to continue to stack wins and continue to get better.”
They’ll try to do that with Winston as their starting quarterback — with all of his gifts and all of his flaws, all of the faith he exudes and all of the doubts he deserves.
“It’s an amazing experience to be out there playing,” he said with a huge smile on Sunday.
No need to tell us. We’re all riding it right along with him.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
