Jaxson Dart excites, and worries, New York Giants fans at the same time.
Dart excites fans because in eight NFL starts he has shown the potential to become the quarterback the Giants can build around to finally change the fortunes of a franchise that has clearly lost its way.
Dart worries fans because his fearless, some would say reckless, playing style makes it easy to wonder if the Giants will be scouring the NFL Draft for a new quarterback much sooner than they would like to be.
We already know Dart won’t get anywhere near the streak of 210 consecutive starts two-time Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning made for the Giants. He probably isn’t getting anywhere near the 16-career and 236 regular-season games Manning played in, either.
After missing two games due to a concussion suffered Week 10 while running with the ball against the Chicago Bears, Dart’s willingness to subject himself on Monday night to the Christian Elliss sideline hit that sent him flying through air — and sent Giants’ fans hearts leaping collectively into their throats — showed clearly that the concussion did not knock any of the aggression out of Dart’s game.
Nor does the 22-year-old intend for it to.
“This is football,” Dart said Monday night. “I’m going to get hit if I’m in the pocket or outside the pocket. I feel like I played this way my whole entire life. It shouldn’t be any shocker to anybody if you followed along with my career. We’re not playing soccer out here. You’re going to get hit. Things happen. It’s just part of the game.”
Dart said he was “trying to get to first down” when he was blasted by Elliss.
Dart was unfazed, saying only that “it was a good hit.”
“I’m going to keep playing aggressive,” Dart said. “Hopefully everybody can take a second to watch my tape going back to high school and realize that this is not a shock. I play the game aggressively. I took one hit that people are talking about. I slid. Got out of the way of a lot of hits.
“I appreciate people wanting me to be healthy and all that stuff and I want to be healthy, too. I play this game aggressively. I’m not just going to change how I play the game.”
You do have to appreciate Dart’s toughness. There are times when that willingness to risk his body could help the Giants win games. There are other times, though, when the risk is not worth the potential reward. That is what the Giants want, no, need, Dart to learn. Like many lessons with young players, probably young people in general, it is not a fine line Dart will learn quickly or always walk without falling off.
“We’ve been through this before [with Josh Allen in Buffal] and what makes these players great is their toughness, their competitiveness, their desire to win and you appreciate that about Jaxson, but you also have to be available and try not to take the unnecessary hits,” said GM Joe Schoen. “Jaxson great is his competitiveness, his desire to win and that’s the way he’s wired. So, you try to find a fine line between playing smart, but also not taking away what makes them great.
“Just got to be smart when you can get down and not have to take hits and unnecessary hits. You got to take advantage of those opportunities so you can live to see another day.”
Everyone invested in the Giants just wants Dart’s career to closer to Manning’s in length and success than to Robert Griffin III’s. Griffin, you recall, was Rookie of the Year in 2012 but had career wrecked by a devastating knee injury when he should not have been playing. His career lasted until 2020, but most of that time was spent as a backup.
Dart has heard the warnings again and again. He does understand.
“There’s a time and place for things,” Dart said on Tuesday. “I mean, I watch quarterbacks who play kind of like me around the league. I watch how (Bills quarterback) Josh Allen plays, I watch how (Chiefs quarterback) Patrick Mahomes plays. They take hits, too, so I’m not an anomaly here.
“I just see that they play the game as competitive and as hard as they can. Like I’ve said, this is football, you’re going to get tackled. They get tackled. Every quarterback gets tackled. They’ve taken big hits. Every single quarterback has taken big hits. I don’t really watch it and be like, all right, I’m going to try to model exactly how they do it. We all play the game differently. I think the narrative is just a little funny to me, to be honest.”
The reality is that no matter how many times he hears pleas to protect himself, it will always be up to Dart to decide when to take a risk and when to opt for self-preservation. One thing it seems Dart will always do, which Manning was also willing to do, is to stand tall and take a hit in an effort to deliver a ball to a receiver with a chance to make a big play. Teams need quarterbacks willing to do that.
What excites Giants fans so much is that there are flashes of Mahomes magic, of Allen’s play-making ability, of Joe Burrow’s ability to process what he sees, make a good decision and deliver the ball accurately.
Dart, the Giants hope, will learn that Allen is a true anomaly. He is 6-foot-5 and listed at 237 pounds, and I would venture a guess he is 10 or 15 pounds heavier than that. He is bigger, faster and probably stronger than the majority of the defenders trying to knock him down. Dart is listed at 6-2, 223. He isn’t built to take the punishment Allen can withstand.
Mahomes can make plays with his feet, and with the current state of the Kansas City Chiefs, has to make far too many. The difference is that Mahomes rarely takes big hits. He is slippery enough in the open field to generally avoid direct shots. On the sideline, Mahomes has learned to manipulate it such that defenders generally back off because they know Mahomes will sell contact in an effort to get a penalty flag, and will sometimes succeed.
Other quarterbacks like Jalen Hurts and Lamar Jackson have also mastered an ability to run without absorbing unnecessary punishment in the open field.
Maybe Dart will develop a similar ability to protect himself when he inevitably has defenders with bad intentions bearing down on him. Maybe he won’t.
All the Giants can really do is cross their fingers and hope.
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