Giants no longer have QB envy thanks to drafting Jaxson Dart
Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels, left, and Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart. Credit: AP
The Giants lost both of their games to the Commanders last year in stinging fashion. In Week 2, they fell 21-18 in a game in which they did not allow a touchdown but gave up seven field goals — including one as time expired — while lacking their own healthy-enough kicker. That injury prevented them from scoring any of the extra points or conversions after their three touchdowns. In Week 9, it was a 27-22 loss. They failed on a pair of two-point conversions in the second half.
Eight little points separated the three-win Giants from a team that would reach the NFC Championship Game. That’s agonizing.
There was something worse than just the final scores, the circumstances and the trajectories the teams took from those games that gnawed away at the Giants when they reflected on those contests. The Commanders had something the Giants desperately wanted, something the Giants had been banking on getting for themselves but didn’t.
Washington had Jayden Daniels.
The Giants? All they had was quarterback envy.
It was obvious from every syllable uttered by folks such as Brian Daboll (the head coach who had been filmed in the offseason of 2024 fawning over Daniels on “Hard Knocks”) and Malik Nabers (the rookie wide receiver who had been Daniels’ favorite target the season before when they were at LSU together) that they understood the scores may have been close, but the two teams really were separated by a chasm when it came to the most important position in the sport.
The Giants will face Daniels and the Commanders on the road in their opener this Sunday as heavy underdogs. The Giants may pull off an upset or they may start their 2025 season with a humiliating loss. But there is one thing that we can be sure of, one thing that has changed dramatically since those most recent meetings between the division rivals:
Even if the Giants can’t beat the Commanders this time, at least they no longer have to be jealous of Washington’s young quarterback.
A year after missing out on Daniels (and other potential quarterback solutions) in the 2024 draft and yearning for a player of similar promise, the Giants now have one of those for themselves.
Jaxson Dart might not play in this game or when the Giants host the Commanders in mid-December. It doesn’t matter. They no longer face Washington knowing they clearly are among the have-nots of the league.
That goes for all the other teams that now sport quarterbacks the Giants were in position to either select or maneuver up for in last year’s draft. This season’s schedule is quite full of them, it turns out: Bo Nix of the Broncos, Drake Maye of the Patriots, J.J. McCarthy of the Vikings, and we’ll even throw in Caleb Williams of the Bears.
Those games, like this one, won’t be seen through the prism of having to face a player the Giants desired to acquire and (at least last year and in a few of those cases) regretted not getting. After a year of showing up stag at the weddings of all their former girlfriends, at least now the Giants have their clear-cut plus-one.
They have more than that, really. They may have plus-three. That’s because they expect Russell Wilson to give them an immediate upgrade over last year’s quarterback situation. Behind him along with Dart (the Giants aren’t saying who will be QB2 or QB3), they also have Jameis Winston, a player who can display faults on the field but still would have been a better option than what the Giants rode with a year ago.
Daboll still gushes over Daniels. “He’s a dynamic football player,” he said on Monday. “He’s accurate, he’s good under pressure, he’s good in situations. He can bring his team from behind, he gives his players opportunities to make plays in the passing game and he’s unique in the running game, the way they utilize him . . . I expect to see a tremendous football player.”
Now, though, he has nice things to say about his own starting quarterback, too.
“Russ is as consistent as they come,” he said on Monday. “His preparation . . . is at an elite level and I know he’s been doing a lot of film work and I know he’ll show a lot of the young guys, particularly in the quarterback room, what it looks like from his point of view. He knows the league, he’s done it for a long time, but it’s good to have a guy like that in the room.”
And, of course, he has Dart. The rookie for whom the Giants traded up in the first round, who had a dazzling preseason, whom they will try to continue to develop through the early regular season by adding extra scout-team reps to his responsibilities.
Dart isn’t going to be Daboll’s starter right away. He’s something more important.
“I’m glad we drafted him and I’m glad he’s our guy,” Daboll said at the end of the preseason.
That envy Daboll and the Giants once rightly felt is gone. They have a guy.
It doesn’t mean they’re going to be winners. But at least they no longer need to look at other rosters and feel like losers.
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.
