Big Blue View
These days in the NFL, quarterback play means more than it ever has. There was a time when QBs such as Trent Dilfer and Brad Johnson could win Super Bowls with teams that had ferocious defenses. You might even argue that last year’s Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl with mediocre quarterback play because of their own suffocating defense, but that would be unfair to Sam Darnold, who had arguably the best season of his career even though in the Super Bowl itself his play was only middling.
Joseph Santoliquito of Bleeding Green Nation does a feature every year in which he “projects” the Philadelphia Eagles’ record for the coming season based on whether the Eagles have a quarterback advantage over their opponent in each game. I put “projects” in quotes because it’s just a fun exercise and not intended to be rigorous, and indeed in some years it’s done a pretty good job and in others it hasn’t. Part of the reason it’s not perfect, other than week-to-week variance in the play of the quarterback himself, is that opposing defenses vary greatly from week to week. Nonetheless, QB play matters a lot, unless your defense is so awful that they consistently are unable to hold fourth quarter leads (see: 2025 New York Giants). We expect the defense to be better this year, though, so what the heck, let’s give it a try for the 2026 Giants while we’re waiting for training camp to begin.
Adding to the uncertainty is the difficulty in knowing what to expect from Giants starting QB Jaxson Dart. Opinions of the NFL cognoscenti are wildly divergent on Dart’s performance last year. Dart’s traditional passing stats were not impressive in 2025. He finished 21st in completion percentage, tied for 25th in yards per pass attempt, 39th in passing yards per game, tied for 25th in TDs, 18th in the traditional NFL passer rating, and 17th in ESPN’s QBR (quarterback rating), which is based on their expected points added (EPA) metric but with adjustments for the quality of defense faced. Pro Football Focus graded him only 64.2 in passing, only 23nd among NFL starting QBs, although he was eighth (76.9) in running.
And ay, there’s the rub. Dart did as much damage to opposing defenses with his legs as with his arm as a rookie. The problem is, he also did damage to himself by not going down quickly enough to avoid some big hits. That’s something I’m sure will be emphasized in John Harbaugh’s first Giants training camp. There are other questions about Dart as a passer – how accurate he can be on deep balls, improving his footwork to remedy that, speeding up his processing, etc. Throw in the fact that he’ll be operating a Matt Nagy offense rather than a Brian Daboll/Mike Kafka offense, and that Malik Nabers may or may not be available when the season begins, and anything is possible, good or bad.
With that as background, let’s assess the Giants’ 2026...
