Jaxson Cool: Giants QB Dart downplays first win, but it's a big deal for Big Blue
Giants rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart takes the fields for a game against the Chargers at MetLife Stadium on Sunday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Jaxson Dart spent the final few seconds of Sunday’s game in a staring contest with the clock. He had been on the sideline in Dallas two weeks ago when the Giants thought they had a game won in the final seconds but didn’t, and he wanted to make sure the timer hit all zeros this time before he accepted the victory.
When it finally did, and the Giants had pulled off an unlikely 21-18 win over the previously unbeaten Chargers in his first NFL start, Dart casually walked onto the field. People kept coming up to him wanting to celebrate. Coach Brian Daboll wrapped his arms around his head for a long hug, fellow rookie Abdul Carter unloaded a long, choreographed handshake on him and dozens of others pounded his shoulder pads as if they were a drum kit.
Dart, meanwhile, just strolled around, accepting the accolades with a polite smile, sure, yet hardly joining in the festivities.
The quarterback’s performance may have impressed or even shocked many, but he was not among those surprised by what he had accomplished. He always knew he could do this. Why all the fuss when he did?
“Just a football game,” he said. “That’s the best way to describe it.”
The fact that it was — for him at least — speaks to the exact reason why the Giants players, coaches, executives and long-restless fans were so giddy about what they had just witnessed.
“I think it says a lot about our guys,” Daboll said of the performance. “I think it says a lot about [No.] 6.”
Dart wasn’t perfect. He certainly wasn’t dominant. He had fewer passing yards (111) than Chargers rookie running back Omarion Hampton had rushing yards (128). He spent most of the second half playing on a visibly sore hamstring. He even had to duck into the medical tent for a quick concussion test after his 70-yard scramble was called back by a penalty and he ambled back to the line of scrimmage a little too slowly for the liking of the neurological spotter. He took five sacks, looking indecisive on nearly all of them.
But he was something else that this team’s quarterbacks haven’t been for quite a while. Something more important. He looked and felt and played like a winner, and he brought the Giants along with him to that level.
“The confidence he has and the swagger he has is contagious,” right tackle Jermaine Eluemunor said. “Him in the huddle, it was complete positive energy . . . The way he carries himself and the determination he plays with and the detail he plays with is huge. It makes you want to run through a brick wall for him.”
Wide receiver Darius Slayton hadn’t exactly been skeptical about Dart, but he was one of the loudest voices speaking in support of Russell Wilson before his benching cleared the way for Dart to become the starter. After Sunday, Slayton seemed fully convinced.
“You always have belief in practice but . . . the final verdict comes on game day,” he said. “That was a huge confidence boost for him but also for the team.”
Veterans kept talking about the poise with which Dart functioned. He may not have done everything perfectly during the game, but it seemed as if he said all the right things.
“The whole game he was saying, ‘Keep giving me the ball,’ ” defensive lineman Dexter Lawrence said. “You respect that. He would come to the defense and say that a lot. And the plays we needed, he made ’em.”
Added Slayton: “He was clear, cool with his calls. Communicated well.”
Dart even scored points when he kept his mouth shut.
“He kept staying positive,” rookie running back Cam Skattebo said, “and if he didn’t have anything positive to say, he stayed quiet, which is good, too. He tried not to let the negative in. I’m sure he thought a couple things were negative and he held them in.”
Dart described the game as a team win — “the defense carried us,” he said — and even gave a “big shout-out” to Wilson for the way he handled his demotion and helped Dart prepare (and yes, Wilson was one of those who found and embraced Dart early on during the postgame handshakes).
That is true, of course. This was a Giants win, not just a Dart one. The defensive line had 20 pressures on Justin Herbert and forced two takeaways. They even got a pair of field goals from replacement kicker Jude McAtamney, who is on the team with an international player roster exemption.
When the game needed to be won, though, the Giants put the ball in the hands of Dart. On third-and-5 just before the two-minute warning, they could have tried to run and burn some clock before punting but instead called a pass play. Dart hit tight end Theo Johnson, who earlier in the second half had caught his first touchdown pass, for a gain of 10. That it occurred on an off-script play that the two had not actually practiced but had only talked about during those long conversations and film sessions Dart held with all of his receivers made it all the more impressive.
“Not necessarily something we were taught but something where we were on the same page,” Johnson said of sitting in the zone rather than running through it as the play called for. “Just great tight end-quarterback connection there.”
As for Dart’s restrained reaction to his and the team’s performance, that might have been the least surprising element of the day for those who have gotten to know him.
“He expects that of himself,” Lawrence said. “That’s the confidence and the swagger that he has. That’s the biggest thing. That’s huge.”
“If you are a great competitor, you expect to win,” Slayton said. “I think he expects himself to play well and he expected our team to win, and that’s what happened.”
Dart did allow some of the significance of the moment to sink in. He spoke about how the victory is a “big confidence-builder” for the team and had appreciation for Daboll as “the guy who believed in me from Day 1.” He even seemed a bit awed by the fans — many of them kids — who were wearing his jersey and his haircut and his eye-black design at the game.
Ultimately, though, this was exactly what Dart believes he came here to do.
“This is just the start,” he said.
OK, sure. But it’s hard to imagine it having gone any better.
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.
