EAST RUTHERFORD – Jaxson Dart is going to make mistakes. He’s going to make a lot of them, actually.
That’s an undeniable, inherent reality of eventually holding the job he wants.
His response to whatever struggles he encounters will wind up being the most essential component in his evolution as a rookie quarterback for the New York Giants.
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One day in the future, the Giants expect Dart to be their starting quarterback, the face of the franchise and the player to whom an entire locker room looks when the chips are down.
Head coach Brian Daboll is at the top of the list of those counting on that.
But that day is not today, tomorrow or next week.
The Giants are not going to put any pressure on Dart to be QB1 before they feel he is ready to be the man.
The quest until then is to do everything to help the 21-year-old from Ole Miss become the best quarterback he can be. Adjusting to the NFL will be a grind and the learning curve he faces will be tested with every step along the way.
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“We traded up for him. We’re ecstatic to have him,” Giants general manager Joe Schoen said of Dart. “He’s got the makings of a good quarterback, and there’s a long way to go. There’s a developmental process that he’s going to have to go through. Again, these offenses are not easy to learn, and the execution has to be at a high level.”
A primary goal for Dart when rookie camp begins Friday will be to simply get comfortable with the scheme and the demands of being a professional. Once the rookies join the veterans in the second phase of the Offseason Training Program next week, Dart will be keeping a close eye on Russell Wilson, Jameis Winston and Tommy DeVito.
He’s not expected to necessarily fall in line – you don’t make the move the Giants did for Dart and, for the lack of a better expression, stick him in the corner for a while – but there is a process Daboll will want the player to accept.
This won’t be about the depth chart just yet, more regarding his reps – when he takes them, how many he gets and with which players he works – and how that will be determined moving forward.
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Dart will spend plenty of time watching and listening from behind the offensive huddle, even when it’s not his turn to call out the cadence at the line of scrimmage. That will come, but time spent in the meeting room breaking down video of what Daboll wants, comparing and contrasting that to the physical and mental reps Dart gets, that experience will be priceless in closing the gap and ultimately seizing the No. 1 job.
Embracing the pressure and the process
This was where Dart believes he was meant to be, the pressure of being the next quarterback of the Giants and everything that comes with that expectation is an accepted component.
You don’t walk through the lobby doors of one of the NFL’s flagship franchises without noticing the four Vince Lombardi trophies intentionally placed in the display case to the left.
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Over the past decade-plus, the more the Giants have struggled, the heavier the burden the championship hardware represents has gotten for those tasked with trying to get this team back to respectability, let alone in contention for a fifth Lombardi. The true measure of whether Dart can live up to what the Giants believe he will be is handed down with regard to how he performs on game day.
New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart meets reporters in East Rutherford, NJ.
Yet the timeline between Dart stepping onto the practice fields in the shadow of MetLife Stadium for the first time Friday and the day he takes over as starting quarterback – whenever that is, this season or next – will depend on so much more, on and off the field.
Rookie camp is certainly not the greatest barometer for NFL success. Eli Manning’s first impression in the same stage of his Super Bowl MVP career, twice over, left many wondering if the Giants made a colossal mistake.
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The first pass Manning threw as a Giant at rookie camp in 2004 sailed well beyond his intended target and bounced off a blocking sled.
“It was a very windy day out on the grass practice field that we had, and he threw the ball so poorly that day [during rookie camp], I remember feeling physically ill,” Giants co-owner and team president John Mara recalled for NorthJersey.com and The Record in 2014. “I was saying to myself, ‘What did we just do?’ I remember feeling quite nauseous just thinking about what we had just done. We laugh about that now.”
The Josh Allen comparisons: the plan, not the player
An ESPN.com headline declared in 2018: Josh Allen is the ultimate boom-or-bust NFL draft prospect.
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Allen looked the part, but he was raw when Schoen and Daboll were part of the Buffalo Bills organization that drafted him. The Giants view Dart similarly, and this will be a multi-layered mission to figure out how quickly he can pick up what they need him to learn, and how soon.
The timeframe is uncertain, given the complicated schedule by which Daboll and the coaches must operate.
If this were only about the maturation of Dart, that’d be challenging enough. Now consider that will be happening at the same time Daboll and his staff must dedicate time and effort to the entire team, especially on the heels of a three-win season with the urgency to be ready to compete against a difficult slate and in a division that includes the Super Bowl champion Eagles, the NFC runner-up Commanders and the Cowboys.
Daboll will stress the importance of Dart keeping his head down and focusing on the elements that will prove to be the foundational aspects in his development: fundamentals, technique, and not just an overall understanding of the scheme and playbook, but his ability to communicate that information to the coaches and his teammates.
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The rookies all received the playbooks on their tablets, and while there will undoubtedly be an urge to push ahead as quickly as possible, the challenge facing Dart is actually the opposite. The coaching staff will meet and limit the amount of information he is being asked to digest at a given time, as to not overwhelm him.
The way Daboll views this part of the plan, there is a priority placed on grasping “the boulders,” the keys within the offensive system, and then “the pebbles” are added as progress is made.
The Giants have confidence in who Dart is as a learner and a leader, so it won’t be surprising if his trajectory is accelerated at some point.
The group of Daboll, assistant head coach/offensive coordinator Mike Kafka, passing game coordinator/QB coach Shea Tierney and assistant QB coach Chad Hall will be tasked with eventually weighing Dart’s readiness through the lens of numerous significant factors: his leadership, physical fundamentals, footwork, drop back mechanics, throwing mechanics and his read progressions.
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His decision making is perhaps most paramount, and that’s not just about being comfortable in what he sees at the line of scrimmage. It’s also about knowing when to change the plays, and how that relates to the entire offense, not just how that affects the quarterback.
That’s a play-to-play, day-to-day, week-to-week evolution for Dart, and the Giants will hope to see notable improvement in those areas as often as possible.
“Maybe you’ll see him in there [with the first team], sprinkle him in when he doesn’t even know he’s supposed to go in there,” Daboll said. “Just to see how he reacts being in a different atmosphere. He won’t know when or why.”
To truly appreciate why the Giants believe in Dart, go back to the pre-draft evaluation where his humility and intelligence allowed him to shine.
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The Giants’ homework started well before the team’s contingent arrives on campus for their private workouts, a critical phase of the process for Daboll.
Dart set a standard to which the rest of the Class of 2025 had to measure up.
The physical tools were there, but the way Dart handled everything the Giants threw at him is what set him apart.
Daboll develops tests for each quarterback featuring formations, motions, defensive fronts, run concepts and pass concepts. Those exams are sent to the quarterbacks and returned before the private workouts so Daboll and the Giants can get a baseline for the prospects’ football knowledge.
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The Giants trust their meetings with the players, and that includes the work on the board, with Daboll pushing buttons to truly witness which of the prospects can thrive under that spotlight.
“You know, the face of a franchise is the quarterback,” Daboll said. “It’s not an easy position to evaluate and it’s not an easy position to coach or to play, so you do the best job you can to try to find the right one for your team.”
On the call that confirmed his selection with the 25th overall pick, after the Giants traded a pair of third-rounders and No. 34 overall to move up, Schoen told Dart: “You dominated the entire process with us, man.”
The league’s Top 4 career passing yardage leaders are Peyton Manning, Brett Favre, Drew Brees and Tom Brady.
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Manning, the first overall pick in 1998 of the Indianapolis Colts, is the only one who started Week 1 as a rookie. He played all 16 games, throwing an NFL-leading 28 interceptions as the Colts finished 3-13.
Neither Favre, Brees nor Brady started a single game as rookies. Each went on to win at least one Super Bowl, even if Brady is an outlier as a sixth-round pick.
Eli Manning started seven games as a rookie with the Giants, going 1-6 with six TDs and nine interceptions when he replaced Kurt Warner in November.
Any mention of Allen in relation to Dart is really more for the plan the Giants have set in motion, not the player comparison, which at this stage of the game would be incredibly unfair and premature.
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In Allen’s rookie year, he finished with just over 2,000 yards, 10 touchdown passes and 12 interceptions. He started the season on the bench, but with Nathan Peterman and A.J. McCarron ahead of him, the Bills made the move to Allen in the second half of the first game and never looked back. Six years later, Allen is the reigning NFL MVP.
The Giants are not in that situation, at least not on paper. They’re going to push ahead with Wilson as the starter and Winston as the backup, and as long as the Giants compete, winning some games along the way, they should be able to resist the temptation to force Dart into the lineup.
There will be no pressure to play the rookie – until there is, and that can come in a variety of ways, including team brass feeling the need to show ownership that Dart represents a big reason for optimism beyond this season.
When training camp arrives in late July, Dart should be a different quarterback: more confident, more sure of his game and where he fits.
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The expectation will be to impress the coaches and the front office with every snap he takes.
Beyond what is required for the rest of the team, Dart will likely meet with Daboll every week, just the two of them. It’ll continue a crash course for the rookie, giving the head coach the opportunity to make sure the future of the position receives some personal attention.
Once the regular season begins, Wilson will be with the first-team offense in practice. Winston will be running the scout team, for now, and it is entirely possible Dart could be relegated to drill periods throwing to the running backs and tight ends.
Dart will have the chance to send a message to Daboll and the rest of the team much sooner, of course. He needs to prove from jump he was listening and learning, and that he is not afraid of taking a risk when the right play is there to be made.
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“I feel like any time I step on the football field, I’m going to go out there and ball, regardless of who I’m playing against,” Dart said. “I have that confidence in myself. But at the same time, I understand coming to the next level, there’s definitely going to be a development piece, and that goes for anybody, regardless of where you’re at in your career, if you’re taking it to the next level.
“That’s my plan: to attack each and every day and to prepare myself for whenever my time is to come.”
And that time for Jaxson Dart and the Giants is certainly coming.
It’ll be sooner rather than later if he aces the post-draft process the way he did the one that paved the way for his arrival in the first place.
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That’s why Jaxson Dart is a Giant. No matter the timetable, there is no escaping that reality.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Jaxson Dart: Detailed path to becoming NY Giants starting QB
