Jaxson Dart is ready to be an NFL starting QB. When will he be one for Giants?
Giants rookie QB Jaxson Dart reacts after throwing a touchdown pass during the second half of a preseason game between against the Jets on August 16, 2025. Credit: Getty Images
Among the many takeaways from Jaxson Dart’s short time with the Giants this summer, the one that stands out as obvious to everyone from head coaches and executives to casual fans putting together their fantasy draft boards is this:
He’s ready.
He’s not perfect and there are areas to improve, but that’s the case for every quarterback in the NFL, even the ones who flash their Super Bowl rings around. Yet from the time he was selected in April to now, after two preseason games with fairly extensive playing time, he’s gotten better at each step of the journey. What’s more, the bigger the milepost he faces, the faster he seems to clear it. He was good in practices, better in joint practices, better yet in the preseason contests. He’s a gamer who rises to the occasion.
“He’s a really good player,” starting tackle Jermaine Eluemunor said on Monday. “I think he’s going to be really good for this team and just the progress he’s made throughout the offseason and from OTAs to minicamp to training camp, you can see his progression. You can also see the way he’s catching up with the speed of the game because from college to the NFL, the speed is a huge jump. He’s starting to catch up fairly quickly, which is really cool to see. Some of the throws he makes, you’re just like, ‘Damn, this is going to be a good kid.’ ”
He's the quarterback the Giants and their fans have been waiting for.
So now that they have him, are they really willing to put Dart in a Jaxson Hole all season long?
That was the plan at first and the Giants were comfortable letting the kid ripen on the vine a little longer while Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston dictated the fate of this 2025 season. Now that he has shown what he can do, though, that plan may become more difficult to adhere to.
Brian Daboll hasn’t budged on his determination that Wilson will be the Week 1 starter on Sept. 7. But it is starting to feel like there may be two opening days to this season: The game in Washington in Week 1 and whichever game Dart ascends to the starting role.
That second one may have to wait.
At least if the Giants have the patience to hold off on it all season long, they’ll have a few examples of it paying off to soothe any itches they might encounter along the way.
Mike Kafka, the Giants’ offensive coordinator, was the quarterback coach in Kansas City in 2017 when Patrick Mahomes was drafted and then sat almost the entire year (he started the final game after the team had already clinched a playoff berth). The following year he won the league’s MVP award. The year after that he won his first Super Bowl.
Yet even Kafka knows that isn’t the be-all end-all of quarterback grooming scenarios.
“Every quarterback is different,” Kafka said on Monday. “You see guys that play Week 1 or are a Day 1 starter like Jayden Daniels. But then other players have different trajectories and different, I guess, stories, right? So, I don't think there's a right or wrong way. I think you've got to understand the guy. I think you've got to understand where your team is at. I think you've got to understand how fast of a learner he is or where he's at in the profile of the player and where the offense is and what you can do with the offense.
“There's no cookie-cutter way of doing it. Just be flexible with it.”
That’s what the Giants need to be with Dart: Flexible. He’s already proved he can play. The next big decision will be when that happens.
A lot of that will be up to Wilson. If he starts off strong and the Giants can win a few early games then he’ll probably buy himself some more time on the field. That was the case with Mahomes. Kansas City had Alex Smith, won its first five games, finished 10-6 with the AFC West title and made the playoffs. There was a four-game losing streak in the middle of the season but by then Smith had enough collateral to hold on to his job . . . for the time being at least.
Then there is the story of Josh Allen, the quarterback selected by the Bills when Daboll was the offensive coordinator and current Giants general manager Joe Schoen was an assistant GM in Buffalo. They wanted Allen to sit out his entire rookie year, too. He wound up being on the field replacing ineffective starter Nathan Peterman coming out of halftime of Week 1. Plans change.
There is no indication Wilson will be as woeful as Peterman was, and the Giants have Winston on their depth chart too if things get exceedingly hairy early on.
Still, the patience the Giants will have for Wilson this season has to have gotten shorter with each completed pass and exciting advancement Dart has made. There have been a lot of them, too.
“The quarterback is the most important position on the field,” Eluemunor said. “That’s the commander in chief. You're going to go as far as your quarterback takes you, and Jaxson just has this thing about him where you just want to play hard for him, and you want to see him be successful and you want to do everything you can to make sure he's successful as an offensive lineman. It's really cool to see that. I haven't been around many of those guys.”
He was quick to note that Wilson and Winston have that quality, too. And he did play with Lamar Jackson when he was a rookie in Baltimore and Tom Brady during his final season in New England.
Like the rest of us, though, he seems to be anticipating Dart’s regular-season arrival.
How long that wait lasts will come down to a number of fluid factors that will play out in the weeks and months ahead.
Dart’s readiness, though? That’s no longer a variable.
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.
