It’s only been one game, but so far New York Giants fans are happy with rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart.
The Giants made the decision to turn the keys to the offense over to Dart earlier than expected, with the making the move in advance of their Week 4 game against the Los Angeles Chargers. At the time, the Giants were 0-3 and preparing to go against a 3-0 team boasting one of the best defenses in the NFL.
Unsurprisingly, Dart was widely expected to struggle. And yet, the rookie didn’t struggle, nor did he panic or look overwhelmed.
Dart didn’t light up the scoreboard by any means — though that was helped by twice getting the ball on the Chargers’ 3-yard line thanks to interceptions from Dexter Lawrence and Dru Phillips. His stat line of 13-for-20, 111 yards, 1 touchdown, 12 carries, 54 yards, 1 touchdown, wasn’t stellar. However he also didn’t put the ball in danger (apart from one fumbled snap), and made good decisions to keep drives going.
This week we asked the Big Blue View community to grade Dart’s first start, and fans are encouraged.
A full 84% of fans thought Dart’s performance against the Chargers was at least “above average”, with nearly 20% of fans believing he played an excellent game.
Both Dart and Brian Daboll said after the game that Dart has things to work on, and I tend to agree. He was poised, but he also rushed through his reads on some occasions — a problem that’s stretched back to the pre-season as he’s in the process of learning how to sync his steps with receivers’ routes in an NFL offense.
I’d encourage everyone to give Nick’s excellent breakdown of Dart’s play a read.
Likewise, quarterback J.T. O’Sullivan has a very detailed play-by-play film breakdown of Dart from the perspective of a former NFL quarterback.
Considering it was his first start against a talented and well-coached defense, Dart established a solid baseline for himself. Now he needs to build upon his first performance and take steps forward, even in the absence of Malik Nabers.
Taking steps forward should be the goal for the Giants as a whole, and most fans believe that the Giants aren now heading in a good direction.
We’re still 20 points shy of our pre-season high of 92 percent confidence in the direction of the team. However Dart’s — and the Giants’ — first win has had an incredible impact on fan morale, and confidence has jumped 25 points since last week.
We finally have enough data points that I feel confident giving a visual representation of fan confidence.
As we’ve seen in the past, Giants’ fans want to believe in their team, and fan confidence generally proves pretty durable. Even if fans get down after a bad loss, their confidence tends to be buoyed by competitive play as we saw against the Cowboys and Chiefs. Stacking a win over the Saints after the upset win over the Chargers could have us back up to where we were prior to Week 1, even with the loss of Nabers.
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