Tom Rock: Brian Daboll returns to face a Giants team without the QB he drafted

There is an irony that Brian Daboll, the former head coach of the Giants, whose one big positive and lasting legacy from his four-season tenure here was his hand in setting the franchise up with a quarterback around whom it believed it could build its future, a quarterback who was so instrumental in luring Daboll’s upgrade of a replacement John Harbaugh to New York, and the quarterback who brought the first full dose of excitement to the fanbase in years when he opened this season with a rousing victory over the Cowboys two weeks ago, will be returning to MetLife Stadium with the Titans on Sunday.

And yet that quarterback will not.

Dart suffered injuries to his left knee early in Monday’s loss to the Rams that will require surgery and cost him the rest of his second NFL season. It’s been an emotional blow for the entire organization as it tries to pick up the pieces both psychologically and physically on a short turnaround before facing Tennessee. They’ll turn to Jameis Winston to play the position, Harbaugh and his staff to create a different scheme for the offense, and hope that a defense which was pulverized into cornmeal by the Rams can get its footing back in time to win what is still a very winnable game.

“The games keep getting played,” Harbaugh said. “Nobody feels sorry for you. It's time to go play the next game. Sunday at 1 o'clock, the ball's going to get kicked off, and we're going to have to be the best football team we can be.”

For the rest of this year that version is going to have to be a little worse off than it would have been with Dart.

But there is a bigger picture, too. One that the day-to-day focused coach, the rehab-facing Dart, and the starting quarterback-less other players probably aren’t thinking about in the thick of this obstacle, yet one that is occupying conversations in other darker corners of the team’s headquarters.

At this point a week ago the Giants undeniably had their franchise quarterback of the future on their roster ready to lead them to new heights.

Today there has to be a little less certainty about that.

For an organization whose last true franchise quarterback never missed a start due to injury in a 16-year career, that scenario can be bewildering. Or maybe it’s just comeuppance. Eli Manning blessed the Giants with irreproachable reliability when he was here. Since he has left, it feels like the bill for that era of stability has come due over and over again.

Dart certainly has the talent and charisma and leadership that qualify him for the title as Eli’s Heir. The only thing he lacks is the ability to stay on the field. He’ll finish his first two seasons in the league having started just 14 games and having played the entirety of just 11 of them. Complete games are supposed to be a baseball stat, but for the Giants it’s one they must undoubtedly consider when assessing the viability of Dart’s future.

Most of those times he’s been sidelined have been for concussion checks that turned out to be precautions, including the one that sent Daboll into the blue medical tent to check on him and resulted in fines against the coach and the organization. Dart did miss two starts with an actual concussion as a rookie. In fact, he was in the concussion protocol when Daboll was fired.

Those situations led to the emphasis on his playing it safer when running with the ball, sliding when he could, running out of bounds to avoid unnecessary hits. He seemed to be doing just that in the stellar opening-night win. No one seemed too concerned about him leaping in the air to throw a pass and having his leg bent in opposite directions by converging defenders, though. Yet that’s exactly how this latest injury unfolded.

Dart has shown he can be trusted and make special things happen when he has the football in his hands. It’s just that the Giants can’t always trust in him to be ready to do it. It’s not entirely his fault. Some of these are freaky, flukey incidents. It’s just the way it is.

But considering that the 2027 NFL Draft figures to have a generational glut of talent at the position, the Giants will spend the next seven months deciding whether they are comfortable heading into next season and beyond banking not only on Dart’s full return from this complex injury plus his ability to remain available, or if they need to have a backup plan for the most important position in the sport.

There is even another Manning who they might be able to select this time. Also another Ole Miss quarterback who might intrigue them, too.

There have been plenty of quarterbacks who have been riddled by injuries early on and come back to have spectacular careers. The Chargers gave up on Drew Brees (and the Dolphins passed on acquiring him) because of shoulder issues, and he was just inducted into the Hall of Fame this summer. Joe Burrow has missed many starts due to multiple ailments and could be in the running for this year’s MVP (if he stays upright and viable of course). But for every one of those there is a Robert Griffin III, Carson Wentz, Sam Bradford or Teddy Bridgewater who flashed early but were derailed by visits to the operating room. Heck, let’s throw Daniel Jones in that lot, too.

There is no way of telling which pile Dart will wind up in. Not yet. And probably not before April when the Giants are on the clock and – if current expectations hold – are picking earlier in the draft than they would have been had Dart remained healthy all season long.

The other major player in the Giants drafting Dart besides Daboll was, of course, general manager Joe Schoen. He’s still here.

This past spring he spoke openly about the changes that Dart’s presence had brought to the team and to his job. He didn’t have to spend as much time scouting the quarterback options in this 2026 draft class because he already had one. He noted how there were “a lot of sleepless nights” during the previous few offseasons when the Giants scoured the nation in search of the missing element, but that this most recent one was rather restful.

“It is nice to have that piece in place, to have a rookie quarterback that played well his rookie year and know who you're going to build around,” Schoen said at the Combine in February. “You're really going to build it around Jaxson.”

It seemed so simple at the time. So ideal. So perfect. Since Dart was pulled out of that MRI machine on Tuesday, though, like everything else regarding these Giants, it’s become a bit more complicated.

Daboll and Schoen and Harbaugh all will go about their business on Sunday. The quarterback who tied them together won’t, though, and the once brilliant path to a Giants future that he represented just days ago must be reevaluated.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

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.