EAST RUTHERFORD – Daniel Jones wasn’t horrible. That’s not the point. Nor are any of the built-in excuses you’ll hear for the Giants quarterback off Sunday’s 17-7 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals.

No Malik Nabers. No Devin Singletary. No semblance of a run game.

That’s not the point.

Jones is not a franchise quarterback. Competent? Sure, at times, but this game was just another example of his ceiling. The Giants win – likely running away – if the player under center is the one they’ve been hoping Jones would be since drafting him sixth overall.

Instead, they lost. Lamenting the objective GM Joe Schoen failed to accomplish this offseason: He must go get his guy – the guy.

The Bengals are a bad football team. Immensely talented and star-studded, but bad. They did everything they could to hand this game to the Giants thanks to the many traits reserved for bad football teams. Ill-advised penalties, like the holding to negate a Chase Brown touchdown run. A defensive stand on fourth down, only to hand the ball back to the Giants on a fumble (Zack Moss). Converting a huge fourth down of their own late in the game, only to nearly botch it all with another fumble (Brown).

Cincinnati is undisciplined and unserious. They’ll win some because of their sheer talent, but Joe Burrow was right when he said they’re nowhere near “championship” level a week ago. This should have been a Giants victory as a result.

It’s not.

Because they don’t have their quarterback.

Jones isn’t solely responsible for this one. His red-zone interception was brutal, but there were two missed field goals from Greg Joseph (45 and 47 yards). Andrew Thomas ended up too far down the field to erase a 56-yard pass to Darius Slayton. The defense allowed a 29-yard completion from Burrow to Andrei Iosivas on 3rd-and-12 late in the fourth quarter when it was a three-point game.

Negate those other miscues and you’ll have another case of the Giants winning in spite of, or, at best case with Jones. Never because of him. Because this game is another example that Jones just isn’t the guy. There’s been six years worth of this so far.

He can manage games. He won’t always lose you games. But seldom, if ever, will he be the reason you win games.

There were opportunities on Sunday night for Jones to carry the Giants to victory. He did not. He finished 22 of 41 (53.7 percent) for 205 yards with the interception. He ran for 56 yards on 11 carries.

But he bounced a pass to Slayton for a would-be first down and failed to lead him on another that would have resulted in the same. He sailed a pass over the head of a wide-open Wan’Dale Robinson deep down the field. He failed to connect on a single pass beyond 15 yards.

Again: This was not the disaster you saw from the Giants quarterback in the opener against the Vikings. He wasn’t horrendous or incompetent. Credit Brian Daboll for that. He knows how to call a game to squeeze every ounce out of his quarterback. There’s just a limit – there’s always been a limit. Sometimes the Giants survive it. Far too often it’s exposed when they need him most.

The Commanders seem to have their guy in Jayden Daniels. Watch any of their games and you see how he’s already the one making the play when his team needs it most – willing them to victories. It’s not always about finding the Patrick Mahomes or Lamar Jackson, though. You can still tell when your team has your guy – Kirk Cousins, Brock Purdy, Jordan Love. There is a tangible difference in even the lower-end franchise signal callers.

The Giants expect to get Nabers back next week, NBC reported during the broadcast. The spectacular rookie can flip games himself. Singeltary, too, is a reliable veteran presence in the backfield who stabilizes most situations. But this Giants offense has a ceiling – a low one. They will not break through it until they get more from the quarterback.

They need to find that player this offseason.

There will simply be more of this to come if not.