Jaxson Dart wrote a strong opening act; now, make the sequel a winner, too
Giants rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart takes the fields for a game against the Chargers at MetLife Stadium on Sunday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Jaxson Dart did something that is very difficult to do. He lived up to expectations.
The rookie quarterback made his first career start against the Chargers last week, lifted his team to a level of excitement it had been lacking for some time, gave life to a fan base listless from losing, ran for a touchdown, threw for another and helped the Giants earn their first victory of the season.
“That’s our [expletive] guy!” coach Brian Daboll yelled, pumping his fist, as Dart scooted into the end zone for the opening score of the game.
Offensive coordinator Mike Kafka was a bit more composed while talking about the effort a few days after the fact.
“That was a really cool thing to see,” he said on Thursday, referring to the overall performance.
But now Dart is faced with an even more challenging task than the initial one. He has to produce a sequel. And unlike last week, he has to produce a victory, too.
While the world certainly wanted to see what Dart had to offer, few gave the Giants much hope for the actual W against a previously unbeaten Chargers team. But he now is facing a winless Saints squad in New Orleans.
This is the game many believed would be the “soft landing” for him to make his debut before only three games of Russell Wilson forced Daboll to make a swap at the position. It is by far the most beatable opponent the Giants will face during the first two months of this season and probably on their entire schedule. If Dart can’t lead the Giants to a win over the Saints, all of the celebratory vibes he produced will go hissing out of the balloon.
So yeah, great job in that first game, kid. Now go do it again. And again and again after that.
Because that’s what the grind of the NFL is. It is a game-to-game, week-to-week balance sheet with the shortest memory span of any sport around.
Dart was the Prince of New York this week, but that crown will be ripped away the moment he regresses or the Giants go back to losing.
Good thing Dart already knows that.
“Obviously, it's a better feeling walking out each week with a win,” he said. “I feel like that was good for the locker room and for the guys. But at the same time, it was just one game. We’ve got a long season, and that's just kind of how I view it. Don't make it anything bigger than what it is. It was just one game, and our mindset has to be to win every game that we play.”
And he understands that there is plenty of space in which to improve. Asked which areas he would like to see strides made between starts one and two, he said: “A little bit of everything.”
Some of the specific ones include his footwork in the pocket, getting through his progressions more quickly, trying to avoid as many sacks as he ate against the Chargers, and possibly even dialing back the tough guy routine on the plays in which he is running in the open field.
Not everyone handles winning — and winning early — as well as they think they will. The Giants just parted ways with a quarterback in Daniel Jones who had a record-setting first two games for them in 2019, then five years of never quite playing to that level again (and yes, we know, the offensive line was the problem).
Dart seems to be doing just fine in this world of success, though. He said having his family in town this week helped him avoid getting caught up in the media circus his play created and kept him off his phone . . . so if he didn’t reply to your congratulatory text, now you know why.
Even without that support, few who know him are surprised by Dart’s reaction to his new status and this whirlwind week.
“He’s built for it,” third-string quarterback Jameis Winston said. “He’s had success before and he knows he has to continue to show up, and that’s what he plans on doing . . . Whatever it entails to be a superstar quarterback, he knows that. That’s what he wants to be. He wants to be the best.”
Nor are they shocked that his edge hasn’t dulled. Certainly it won’t against the Saints, one of the few teams he’ll face this year who had a chance to draft him before the Giants eventually did. Dart spoke this past week about that dynamic.
"The quarterback is a bit of an underdog too,” running back and fellow rookie Cam Skattebo said. “Even though he was a first-round draft pick, he still feels like he should have been the number one pick. There was still a quarterback taken before him. He feels a certain way about that."
Sunday would be a good time to express those feelings on the field.
Dart will have some disadvantages in this game. He’ll be without Malik Nabers, the playmaking receiver lost for the rest of the season with a torn ACL. The Saints aren’t quite as hapless as their record indicates, certainly not on defense; they gave reigning MVP Josh Allen a bit of a hard time last week, sacking him three times and forcing his first interception of the year. They are likely to play a much more run-focused scheme against Dart and Skattebo than the Chargers did, too, without having to worry about Nabers going deep on them.
And they have something the Chargers did not have: a full game of film of Dart playing in an NFL game. Maybe that’s why New Orleans is favored in the game.
But Dart has something new, too. He has experience.
“He's starting to bank game reps. He's starting to bank different looks from defenses,” Kafka said. “He's starting to see the stuff on tape carry over onto the field, and he's kind of creating this bigger picture for himself in terms of ‘oh, yeah, I've seen that before. I've seen that body language.’ It's one thing to describe it as a coach, but once you actually are in there and you feel it and you see it, it triggers a different type of response.”
The games don’t get easier after this one. The Giants will host the Eagles on Thursday night, then they are at Denver in Week 7, and then they are in Philadelphia for an Eagles rematch in Week 8.
The competition will get better and better. And so Dart will have to get better and better to give the Giants any kind of chance in those contests.
That’s the way it goes in the NFL.
“We've got to come to compete every single day,” Dart said. “I think that's kind of been my message to everybody in the locker room.”
His message to them, not their message to him, as you might expect. The rookie gets it.
Now all that’s left is for him to keep doing it.
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.
