Jaxson Dart's next step of development: Adjusting to new personnel
Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart celebrates after tight end Theo Johnson scored against the Denver Broncos on Oct. 19, 2025. Credit: AP
After practice on Wednesday, Jaxson Dart stuck around for an extra 10 minutes or so and threw close to 40 deep passes to his receivers. Rapid-fire rockets, one after the other, hitting targets at the pylons and the post from about midfield.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
“Young arm,” receiver Darius Slayton said of the rare and repetitive aerial display. “We all want to work on pushing the ball down the field, so he wants to get those reps with us.”
It wasn’t so much the throws that stood out, or even the catches. It was who was on the receiving end of them.
Slayton and Wan’Dale Robinson were out there. So was tight end Theo Johnson. They’re main pieces to the offense. But so were veteran receiver and recent practice squad addition Ray-Ray McCloud III and rookie tight end Thomas Fidone II. Neither of them has been targeted in a game by Dart, much less caught a pass from him.
This is the world in which Dart now exists. He had his No. 1 receiver, Malik Nabers, for less than half of his debut start. He’s had to say Skatt-adieu to his close friend, running back Cam Skattebo, after last week’s gruesome ankle injury. Slayton was unavailable to him for two of his five starts. And now tight end Daniel Bellinger, who has emerged as a viable weapon for him, is listed as doubtful for Sunday’s game against the 49ers with a neck injury.
Quarterbacks thrive in stability, and in his short career, Dart has had very little among his targets. His dance partners keep rotating, and with the exception of Robinson, he has been unable to truly get in step with any of them.
“I have overwhelming confidence in all the guys that step on the field with me,” Dart said right after that post-practice workout. “I never have any doubt when I’m on the field, they all know that.”
He did, however, acknowledge that there have been “a lot of different plug-and-play situations” and that the Giants “have been a little banged up at some skill position spots.”
“That’s just part of the NFL,” he said. “Every team is going to have injuries. You’ve got to be able to weather the storms of those.”
No one expected it to rain this early, though.
Welcome to the next phase of Dart’s development: Adjusting to new personnel. He’s aced most of his early tests as a rookie quarterback and drawn effusive praise from everyone from Tom Brady to Broncos coach Sean Payton to 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh. Now he has to keep going forward even while some of his most reliable pieces on the field stay behind.
“There’s been a lot of change,” Slayton said. “It’s hard. The cliche advice is to stay calm through the ups and the downs, but the reality of it is you get a rapport with people and then if those people are gone, or if they are in and out, it’s hard. You can’t have rapport with everybody, and it takes time to build that. The best advice you can give is do your best to adjust as fast as you can to changes.”
Said offensive coordinator Mike Kafka: “Jaxson’s done a great job of kind of getting everyone on the same page. Whether he’s meeting with them extra or talking to them on the sideline, just those open lines have been great in getting everyone together.”
On Sunday, that will have to carry over to the field.
McCloud, elevated to the active roster on Saturday to help both the offense and special teams, said he already likes playing with Dart and praised his “sharpness” and “competitive edge.”
The eighth-year vet — who has played with the Bills’ Josh Allen, the Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger, the 49ers’ Brock Purdy and most recently the Falcons’ Kirk Cousins and Michael Penix Jr. during his career — said building a relationship on the fly with a quarterback can be easy if their personalities match.
“[Dart] has some swag about him and I have that too, so I think it’s going to be an easy transition,” he said. “You have to put in the work, but I think it’s going to be a great outcome for both of us.”
Most of the responsibility for that will fall to Dart. He’s the quarterback. He is the leader of the team no matter who else is out there with him.
His in-house mentors have been in his ear about that this week.
“As a young guy, Jaxson’s focus has to remain on his decisions and his execution,” third-string quarterback Jameis Winston said. “As long as that aligns, it doesn’t matter who else is out there, he’s going to go out there and play well. He just has to play his game.”
Winston is confident that Dart will do just that.
“He doesn’t care who he has, who he is playing with, he’s gonna make it work,” he said. “At the quarterback position, you have to make people play better than what they even expect out of themselves. That’s what good quarterbacks do.”
For Dart to be situated among those “good quarterbacks,” now he’ll have to do it too.
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.
