When should Jaxson Dart start? When will he start?

NFL teams typically don’t wait long to get their guy on the field, for better or worse

For a team coming off a 3-14 season, there seems to be considerable excitement surrounding the New York Giants coming off their rookie minicamp this week. Adding a potentially elite pass rusher in Abdul Carter has something to do with that (even if most of the attention so far has been on his uniform number). The great value Joe Schoen seems to have gotten with his Day 2 and 3 picks is another reason: Schoen got defensive tackle Darius Alexander at No. 65 when the consensus big board had him at No. 51. He got running back Cam Skattebo at No. 105 when the big board had him at No. 91. He got offensive lineman Marcus Mbow in Round 5 (No. 154) when the big board had him as an early third round value (No. 65).

Let’s face it, though. All eyes are on No. 6 in your program, quarterback Jaxson Dart. Schoen did well in only giving up a third-round comp pick and a 2026 third-round pick to move up to No. 25 for Dart, and he didn’t panic and give up more to get ahead of other QB-needy teams such as Pittsburgh. So props to him. It all hinges, though, on whether or not Dart turns out to be the real deal. No one will remember the other draft picks if Dart turns out to be the second coming of Daniel Jones. (Proof: How many fans think the Giants’ 2019 draft was great because they got Dexter Lawrence in the bottom half of the first round?)

The early returns are encouraging. We get to see only snippets of Dart on the field looking good throwing passes, and Giants Life gives us a peek at how Dart’s Top 30 visit and grilling in front of the hierarchy went down (pretty well to the untrained eye). His first interactions with the beat writers show someone much more comfortable in the spotlight than Jones ever was. It’s all good.

Still, we know he has a lot to learn about the NFL. Snap count cadences as opposed to clapping. Reactions to post-snap defensive shifts. Going through full-field read progressions. Playing behind the center with much less play-action. And so on. There’s no way to tell right now whether he’ll absorb all that easily, translate it to decisions on the field, and become a top-flight NFL quarterback, or whether he’ll go the way of so many highly drafted quarterbacks that never make it.

The big immediate question: When will Dart see the field in real games, and when will he become the starter?

A better question is: When should Dart – or any other drafted QB – become a starter?

The Giants have taken three previous major shots at drafting a potential starting QB during the time that I’ve followed them:

1979: Phil Simms. Simms was a raw QB from a small school, and he sat behind the infamous Joe Pisarcik, he of “The Fumble,” for the first four games before Simms took over as the starter. Simms got the Giants to their first playoff game (and win) since 1963 in 1981, but muddled his way through benchings and multiple injuries before establishing himself for good in 1984 and leading the Giants in two Super Bowl seasons.

2004: Eli Manning. Eli mostly sat behind future Hall of Famer and free agent signing Kurt Warner for the first nine games. He did come in late in a Game 1 loss to go 3-of-9 for 66 yards, and he took the field with no stat line late in a decisive win in Minnesota. He didn’t play in serious game conditions, though, until Tom Coughlin benched Warner for good in Game 10. Manning was terrible that season (48.2% completion rate, 6 TDs, 9 INTs), losing his first six starts before a late comeback win vs. Dallas in his final game. He became the starter for good in 2005 but didn’t establish himself as “The Guy” until the 2007 playoffs.

2019: Daniel Jones. Jones was supposed to sit behind Manning, but when Eli had a terrible start to the 2019 season with two bad losses, head coach Pat Shurmur, perhaps feeling pressure after a poor 2018 debut, turned to Jones in Game 3. He looked right in that first game in Tampa Bay when Jones thrilled fans with his arm and legs in a stirring second-half comeback. The rest of the season, though, good defenses mostly befuddled him, and other than a brief renaissance under Brian Daboll in 2022, he mostly regressed rather than developed.

In all three cases, the Giants were coming off a dispiriting previous losing season (6-10 in 1978, 4-12 in 2003, 5-11 in 2018), just as the 2025 Giants are. The Giants’ current situation probably most closely resembles 2004: A former Super Bowl-winning, future Hall of Fame quarterback whose play had dropped off was signed as the starter while the draftee learned the ropes and the defense was asked to carry the load until the magic began on the other side of the ball.

It’s easy to argue that in all three cases, the Giants made the wrong decision on how to handle their rookie QB. None of Simms, Manning, or Jones looked ready to play full-time their rookie year though each had flashes. Simms went 17-of-32 for 300 yards and 2 TDs in his third start, a 32-16 win over the 49ers. Manning had that stirring 4th quarter 21-point comeback with 2 TD passes to defeat Dallas 28-24 in the last game of the season. Jones of course had the thrilling 31-28 comeback win in Tampa Bay in which he threw for 2 TDs and 336 yards, and then a late-season 41-35 win in Washington in which he had 5 TD passes including the winner in overtime.

What can we learn from the rest of the NFL? Here is the complete list of quarterbacks drafted in Round 1 in each of the past eight drafts, showing the (year, game) in which they first saw action, and the (year, game) in which they made their first start:

Data courtesy of Pro Football Reference

About half the rookies saw action at some point in their first NFL game. About one-third were named starters on Day 1. Only Jordan Love among the 30 QBs didn’t play as a rookie (not counting the injured J.J. McCarthy). About three-quarters had been elevated to starter by mid-season, and about two-thirds only a few games into the season. Head coaches can’t resist taking their new toy out for a ride.

Other than Love, the latest that any quarterback had to wait to see action and become a starter was, of all people, Patrick Mahomes. It wasn’t because he wasn’t ready to play, even though there were big questions about him coming out of college because of the Air Raid offense he’d run at Texas Tech and all he supposedly had to learn to succeed in the pros. When Mahomes got to Chiefs training camp, he started wowing the defense in practice. Yet he never saw the field in a game until the last one of the season, after Kansas City had clinched a playoff spot. The next year the Chiefs traded Alex Smith, Mahomes became the starter, he threw 50 TD passes, and the rest is history.

There’s no single conclusion that can be drawn from the chart above. In 2024, Jayden Daniels started Week 1 and has never looked back. Caleb Williams did too, but he hasn’t looked ready to be a starter. Bo Nix struggled the first half of the season, during which Denver won with him rather than because of him, but he looked much better from Week 8 onward.

From 2023, C.J. Stroud has looked like a veteran from Week 1 while Bryce Young was not ready for prime time, and Anthony Richardson was pushed into action too soon given his meager college experience. Other than Love and Mahomes, the quarterbacks who waited the longest to start were Michael Penix Jr, who looked good in his first start vs. the Giants, and Lamar Jackson, who was mainly a runner in the games he started in his rookie year.

Dart was a later draft pick than all of those other first-rounders except for Love and Jackson. That suggests that Brian Daboll will be in no rush to get Dart on the field in a real NFL game, especially with two fairly proficient veteran QBs on the Giants’ roster. That said, Dart has a ton of college experience, so it might be a matter of how quickly he adapts to the pro game.

Ideally, the Giants follow the Chiefs playbook and sit Dart until a meaningless late-season game after they’ve clinched their playoff spot. (I jest, but that is what happened in Daboll’s first season when Davis Webb started in Week 18.) The wild card is the pressure on Daboll this year to win. If Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston are not getting the job done by the Giants’ bye week, no one will be shocked to see Dart start after the bye, if he progresses well in training camp. Whether that will be the best thing for Dart’s career is a different question, as Mitchell Trubisky, Trey Lance, and Justin Fields might attest – maybe even Trevor Lawrence, who started right away and looked NFL-ready as a rookie but has not progressed since then.