Big Blue View
Good morning, New York Giants fans!
Rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart viewed the New York Giants’ 34-17 win over the defending champion Philadelphia Eagles on Thursday night at MetLife Stadium as a statement.
It snapped the Giants’ eight-game losing streak in the NFC East and was their first win over a defending Super Bowl champion since beating the Denver Broncos in Week 15 of the 1998 season. Message received.
Daboll has been notoriously tight-lipped in news conferences during his four-year tenure. But he can’t hide his exuberance for Dart. That’s not a surprise since Daboll staked his career on the 22-year-old, benching Super Bowl champion Russell Wilson three games into the season and making sure the world knew it was “my decision.”
Daboll tried to catch himself and slip back into coach-speak a few times after Thursday’s win, making sure to point out that the victory wasn’t about one player and that the whole team played an important role. But he couldn’t help himself, always returning to shower more affection on the quarterback he fell in love with during the pre-draft process. “I’ve liked everything about Dart since we got him,” Daboll said.
A different Daboll showed himself on Thursday, however: the real Daboll. The one who went for the two-point conversion in Tennessee in his first game as the Giants’ coach in 2022. The one who threw a tablet on the ground once after Daniel Jones threw an interception against the Seahawks.
He began returning to his true, unfiltered self in Week 4 when he benched Russell Wilson, put in Dart and announced it as “my decision” rather than a collective one….He is leaning into a street fighting mentality, into his occasionally uncontrolled emotion and into his gut instincts about when it’s time to turn up the volume. His fire can light up the team in a good way, or it can burn others inadvertently in its wake.
