Jaxson Dart showed everyone he's the real deal, even if rest of Giants aren't there yet
Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart celebrates after tight end Theo Johnson scored against the Denver Broncos on Oct. 19, 2025. Credit: AP
The Giants awoke Monday morning — or at least those of them who were able to get any sleep Sunday night did — with the same football hangover as the rest of us. They were left trying to piece together hazy events that had unfolded the previous evening and sorting through the few gruesome details that somehow did manage to stay in focus on this day after.
The disorienting blur of ineptitude and compounding bad moments had resulted in the most soul-crushingly improbable regular-season loss for the franchise since 2010 — maybe since 1978 — and it needed to be parsed and digested.
“There are certainly a lot of guys hurting right now,” coach Brian Daboll said.
There were at least a half-dozen plays in the fourth quarter alone that, had they been called better or executed better or even bounced luckier, should have saved the team from this historic humiliation. The obvious ones included the missed extra point(s), the two long passes on Denver’s game-winning drive and the touchdown run in which Bo Nix covered 18 untouched yards to give Denver its first lead of the game.
But wait! Something else happened in that brief time frame between this game being a statement of dominance by the Giants’ defense for the first 45 minutes of play and devolving into one of the most epic collapses in NFL history. Something that was . . . positive?
Ah, yes. The Giants have a quarterback.
Jaxson Dart showed the world that he is in fact the real deal, even if the rest of the Giants aren’t there yet.
This could have been — nay, should have been — the defining game and drive of Dart’s young career. Leading the Giants on a 65-yard touchdown march, converting a fourth-and-19, throwing the pass that drew the interference penalty and then wiggling his way through the mass of bodies to stretch out for the end zone with 37 seconds to play? That’s exactly the kind of drive that only a handful of teams in the league can even allow themselves to imagine pulling off. The rest of them simply lack the talent and will power at the most important position in the sport.
The Giants used to be among those have-nots. Not any longer.
“That was a big drive for us there and he contributed significantly to it with some of the plays he made,” Daboll said. “He played his butt off . . . He gave us an opportunity to win against one of the better defenses on the road in a hostile environment. Obviously that one [interception] hurt, but there are a lot of plays that helped get to where we were at.”
When Daboll named Dart the starting quarterback less than a month ago, he warned there would be bumps and growing pains and learning curves that would need to be navigated. Just four starts into it, though, it clearly isn’t Dart whose inexperience is letting down the Giants. He’s given them a lead in every game he’s started and a lead in the fourth quarter of three of them. It’s the Giants who are letting down Dart.
That much was clear as the youngster knelt on the sideline, watched the Broncos’ game-winning field goal soar through the goalposts and put his hand to his face in utter disbelief. It was obvious as he glumly remarked shortly afterward: “I just can’t stand losing.”
Sure, Dart could have been better. His interception with less than five minutes left in the fourth quarter was a big momentum swing. His deep pass to Jalin Hyatt on that last drive was just barely overthrown. And when he was ruled down at the 1 on the initial call on his touchdown run, he needed to have the composure to get the ball spotted for the upcoming second-down play rather than wasting time complaining to his sideline about the inaccurate ruling.
He overcame all of them, though. He did the hard part. He brought the Giants back and hung five touchdowns and 32 points — none of them aided by a takeaway or a dynamic special teams return for great field position; all of them on scoring drives of at least 59 yards — on one of the NFL’s best defenses. Oh, and he did it without Malik Nabers and Darius Slayton.
The easy part should have been making that stick and having that become the indelible memory from this game. Of course, it wasn’t.
“Just resilient,” tight end Daniel Bellinger said. “In that huddle, you wouldn’t think he’s a rookie the way he carries himself. He’s a mature individual who’s going to have a lot of success in this league. We just got to make sure we have his back.”
Dart’s performance wasn’t enough to give the Giants a victory in Sunday’s game. Nor is it much of a balm for the pain that still throbbed through the locker room and meeting rooms on Monday.
In the long-term, league-wide contest among the 32 franchises, however, the one in which teams either very obviously have a quarterback or very obviously don’t — with hardly any middle ground — the Giants finally are back in the former category. And they got there faster than perhaps even they thought they would.
“I have confidence in Jaxson,” Daboll said. “He puts everything he has into it and he does everything he can possibly do to help put our team in good positions.”
That’s a different kind of win. It isn’t one that is paying off now, but it should be very beneficial and rewarding moving forward.
That collapse in 2010 on the DeSean Jackson punt return? As miserable as that was, it led directly to the Giants winning the Super Bowl the following season under Tom Coughlin’s simple slogan of “Finish.”
And The Fumble in 1978? It led to overhauls in the organization that brought two other championships to the Giants.
Where this one will lead has yet to be written. But wherever it goes, one thing was made clear even though the fog of despair: It will be Dart who takes them there.
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.
