Tom Rock: If Jameis Winston isn't the answer at QB, the Giants need to find someone who is
Jameis Winston of the New York Giants against the Los Angeles Rams at SoFi Stadium on September 21, 2026. Credit: Getty Images/Harry How
There are few things as deflating for fans, players, coaches and executives as watching a promising football season crumble to the turf along with an injured starting quarterback.
That happened to the Giants in Los Angeles when Jaxson Dart suffered what reportedly has turned out to be a season-ending knee injury at the end of the first drive of a Monday Night Football game. The game was intended to showcase the team’s return to prominence and prosperity but instead illustrated the vulnerability just about every team tries to ignore.
It also happened to the Jets in 2023 under an eerily similar scenario. Big Monday Night stage. Lots of excitement and hoopla. End of the first possession. Back then it was Aaron Rodgers who tore his Achilles, not the tissues in his knee as Dart did. Rodgers, like Dart, offered some brief hope by limping off the field under his own power. The Jets won, but their season went downhill.
Fast.
Even more difficult than watching that Rodgers injury, dissecting what should have happened with the blocking, and seeing the moment the muscles in his calf rippled due to the snap, was watching that playoff-caliber team disintegrate because they relied on a backup quarterback everyone knew wasn’t up to the challenge. That team — and most of the organization — was smothered into submission by the play of Zach Wilson and other bargain-brand backup passers that the Jets eventually picked up off waivers, practice squads, and other avenues they could find. It was the NFL version of shopping on Temu.
The Giants may not have that problem. They have Jameis Winston, the backup quarterback they have so much faith in that they just signed him to a two-year, $13 million extension before the start of this season. Winston will start on Sunday against a winless Titans team that the Giants would have been expected to trounce with Dart on the field and now will merely be favored to beat.
“I am very confident in my ability to execute with precision and to lead the New York Football Giants to victories,” Winston said very calmly in Wednesday’s media availability, which lacked the whimsy that he normally brings to the cameras. “Very confident in that.”
But if the Giants don’t win — and more to the point if Winston is as shaky after a week of first-team preparation as he was on Monday — the Giants will need to learn the lesson the Jets illustrated so brilliantly three seasons ago, when they ignored opportunities to upgrade the position dramatically.
The only thing worse than losing a starting quarterback early in the year is short-arming the effort to replace him.
That’s what those Jets did and it cost them the faith of their locker room, the loyalty of fans, and more than a few careers in the building. The Giants must not go that route.
Coach John Harbaugh said on Wednesday that the Giants are “working on” adding a quarterback to the roster. He said he would prefer it be someone who has starting experience. Harbaugh did not rule out trading for this player. “All options are open,” he said.
Ideally, this person would begin as the backup to Winston. But it needs to be someone who they think can play, to whom they can turn if needed.
Winston may be good enough to at least keep them buoyant. He’s a streaky, inconsistent player which is why he has settled into a backup role at this point in a career that began with him as the first overall pick.
We saw last year what he can add to the team; his touchdown catch and run against the Lions would have been the hands-down play of the year in the league had the Giants won enough games to make it relevant. We also saw what he cannot add to the team. The Giants lost both of his starts. Winston’s record in his last 12 starts for the Giants, Saints and Browns is a terrifying 3-9.
That extension the Giants gave to Winston a few weeks ago was an indication of how much the organization likes him, and how well he had settled into his role as Dart’s mentor. They believed he could replace Dart for a few series or even a few weeks if needed. But this is not how they envisioned using him, as the seasonlong stand-in.
Maybe he is up for it. From this angle it would be more surprising if he flopped in this new role than if he blossomed into it. More than likely he’ll be who he has always been, someone who can make the plays but also makes mistakes. He’ll be Jameis.
But maybe he is the Giants’ version of Zach Wilson, too.
When that 2023 season ended, Jets owner Woody Johnson spoke at the Super Bowl about where the team was heading and the lessons he learned. “We need a backup quarterback,” he said of his shopping list. “We didn’t have one last year.”
The Giants think they do have one. But if Sunday proves they don’t, then they need to go get one quickly. Mac Jones. Jimmy Garoppolo. JJ McCarthy. Joe Milton. Just don’t do what the Jets did — nothing — and stubbornly ride the lack of in-house depth at the most important position into the abyss.
As Harbaugh said: “The season is not over, but it is for [Dart].”
The Giants need the quarterback who can get that done. If Winston ain’t it, they need to find someone else.
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.
