Tom Rock: If Jameis Winston isn't the answer at QB, the Giants need to find someone who is

There are few things as deflating for fans, players, coaches and executives as watching a promising football season crumble to the turf along with an injured starting quarterback.

That happened to the Giants in Los Angeles when Jaxson Dart suffered what has turned out to be a season-ending knee injury at the end of the first drive of a Monday Night Football game that was intended to showcase the team’s return to prominence and prosperity but instead illustrated the vulnerability just about every team tries to ignore.

It also happened to the Jets in 2023 under an eerily similar scenario. Big Monday Night stage. Lots of excitement and hoopla. End of the first possession. Back then it was Aaron Rodgers who tore his Achilles, not the ligaments in his knee as Dart did, but even he, like Dart, gave some a brief yet false hope by being able to limp off the field under his own power. The Jets managed to win that game, but their season went careening downhill.

Fast.

Even more difficult than watching and rewatching that Rodgers injury, dissecting what should have happened with the blocking, if there was something he could have done differently, and seeing the moment the muscles in his calf rippled due to the snap, was watching that playoff-caliber team disintegrate because they relied on a back-up quarterback everyone knew wasn’t up to the challenge. That team - and most of the organization - was smothered into submission by the play of Zach Wilson and the uninspiring crew of other knockoff bargain-brand backup passers the Jets eventually decided to pick up off waivers, practice squads, and whatever other avenues they could find. It was the NFL version of shopping on Temu.

The Giants may not have that problem. They have Jameis Winston, the backup quarterback they have so much faith in that they just signed him to a two-year, $13 million extension prior to the start of this season. Winston will start on Sunday against a winless Titans team that the Giants would have been expected to trounce with Dart on the field and now will merely be favored to win.

But if they don’t -- and more to the point if Winston is as shaky after a week of first-team prep as he was on Monday when he grabbed his helmet and finished the game in place of Dart -- the Giants will need to learn the lesson the Jets illustrated so brilliantly three short seasons ago when they ignored opportunities to upgrade the position dramatically.

The only thing worse than losing a starting quarterback early in the year is short-arming the effort to replace him.

That’s what those Jets did and it cost them the faith of their locker room, the loyalty of fans, and more than a few careers in the building. The Giants must not go that route.

Now, perhaps they won’t have to add to their suddenly depleted quarterback room. At least not out of desperation. Winston may be good enough to at least keep them buoyant. He’s certainly a streaky and inconsistent player which is why he has settled into a backup role at this point in a career that began with him as the first overall pick.

We saw last year what he can add to the team. His touchdown catch and run against the Lions would have been the hands-down play of the year in the league had the Giants won enough games to make it and them relevant. We also saw what he cannot add to the team. The Giants lost both of his starts. Winston’s record in his last 11 starts for the Giants, Saints and Browns is a terrifying 3-9.

That extension the Giants gave to Winston a few weeks ago was an indication of how much the organization likes him, how well he had fit into his role as Dart’s mentor, how positive his personality had become in the locker room, and how much belief they had in him if the team ever had to replace Dart for a few snaps, a few series, even a few weeks. This is not how they envisioned using him, as the season-long stand-in.

Maybe he is up for it. Maybe the time spent mostly on the sideline in recent years will have changed him. Or maybe he is the Giants’ version of Zach Wilson.

When that 2023 season ended Jets owner Woody Johnson spoke at the Super Bowl about where the team was heading and the lessons he learned.

“We need a backup quarterback,” he said of his shopping list. “We didn’t have one last year.”

The Giants think they do have one. But if Sunday proves they don’t, then they need to go get one quickly. Mac Jones. Jimmy Garoppolo. JJ McCarthy. Joe Milton. Anyone. Just don’t do what the Jets did -- nothing -- and stubbornly ride the lack of in-house depth at the most important position in the sport into the abyss.

The season is still young enough to be salvaged, maybe not with the same lofty goals the Giants (1-1) had after beating the Cowboys, but certainly from the kind of torment that befell those Jets and their fans three years ago, rubble from which they are still digging out.

The Giants just need the quarterback who can do it. If they don’t have one, they need to get one.