Tom Rock: The show must go on for the Giants, and there's no better showman than Jameis Winston
Jameis Winston playing QB for the Giants on Monday, Sept. 21, 2026 in Inglewood, Calif., and Winston in his role as special social and digital correspondent for Fox Sports during their coverage of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Credit: AP/Katie Chin; Getty Images/Stacy Revere
There was a time when Jameis Winston probably thought his most significant performance of the year at MetLife Stadium already was in the books.
During the summer, he served as part of the Fox broadcast of the World Cup matches, which culminated in July in the very stadium where the Giants will play the Titans on Sunday.
His job then was to be fun and loose, help amp up the energy and make sure everyone had a good time. Those are things that come pretty naturally to him. After that, he returned to his full-time gig as a backup quarterback in the NFL.
Then Jaxson Dart got hurt on Monday night and Winston was quickly elevated to the top on-field spot in the organization. He’ll make his first start of the season on Sunday. Unlike that goofy gig he had as a broadcaster, this time his job description will be . . .
Well, actually, pretty close to the same.
The last time the Giants played in the building, they left it in a dizzy and raucous state with a prime-time win over the Cowboys. It was as frenzied an atmosphere as most could recall, topping perhaps even some of the wins that have led to relatively recent but rare playoff appearances.
Now the Giants return, and so much has changed. Dart is out for the year. They’ll be missing several other key contributors. In a game in which they had an opportunity to build on their momentum, they looked disjointed in the loss to the Rams.
As Malik Nabers said, speaking for nearly the entire organization and its fan base upon learning the severity of this Dart-saster: “It takes the breath out of you for sure.”
Throw in the nor’easter, which sent secondary market tickets for the game plummeting to $15 each on StubHub as of Friday evening, and the mood certainly will be much more somber on Sunday. It has to be.
Enter Jameis, stage left. Ladies and gentlemen, your new master of ceremonies.
It’s now up to him to lift everyone’s spirits and put on a show. He won’t be doing it with silly costumes and weird props and quirky international sidekicks as he did during soccer season, though. At least not if you don’t count Jermaine Eluemunor. He’ll have to do it this time playing quarterback for the New York Football Giants.
That may be more daunting than any podcast or TV segment Winston spends a lot of his free time participating in, but he said it is actually the role he was born to play. Those other pursuits are mere whimsy. Those are characters. This is him for real.
“How I plan my year in terms of design, football is my priority,” he said. “Every single day I write down what I would love, and that’s to be a Super Bowl-winning starting NFL quarterback. My schedule is always planned to execute that.”
Now, for the first time in several years, he gets the opportunity to try for that goal again.
But as any showman knows, especially an understudy whom the audience didn’t pay to see, first he must win over the crowd. Winston said he understands what it will take to accomplish this new task, and it’s very simple.
“The fans want to see wins,” he said. “It’s not about what I’m showing them. It’s about us going out there and winning football games together, giving them something to cheer for, giving them something to stand behind.”
It won’t be the same team and the same circumstances that thrilled Giants fans on Sept. 13. But maybe, just maybe, the result and the vibe can be similar.
“The fans have to show up,” said running back Cam Skattebo, who is a bit of a showman himself. “The crowd’s got to be lit, just like it was the first week. We have to have everybody’s support, just like we did Week 1.
“I think the entire city of New York still knows we have a really good shot at this. And they love Jameis Winston. So we’re not going to take a step down. We’re going to continue to push, continue to work. If we have our fan base with us, if they’re giving everything they got towards us, I promise you they’re going to get everything from us.”
John Harbaugh will make sure of that. He already has kept the bar the same place it had been by saying that Dart’s injury would sideline him for “the regular season.”
What comes after that? You know what comes after that.
It’s not impossible. The Giants have winnable games the next few weeks, beginning with this one. It’s a good spot to try to recapture some positivity and stack a few victories and get things heading in the proper direction.
“It’s tough on the team, it’s tough on all of us,” Harbaugh said of navigating this huge disappointment of missing Dart. “You wake up and you feel like it’s the end of the world. Then you wake up and the world’s not done. The world keeps spinning.”
Now, however, it’s Winston spinning it.
But football, Harbaugh said, is “not a one-man game.”
“It’s not like tennis. You don’t forfeit,” he said. “The Giants are going to roll out into that field out there and play the football game. And we need to be the best Giants we can be.”
And Giants fans? The same ones who were delirious the last time they saw the team in person? The ones who have spent the past week as crestfallen as the players, having been twisted into knots by the various reports on the severity of Dart’s injury?
They just want what they’ve always wanted:
A good show.
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.
