Big Blue View
With 2025 first-round draft pick and current New York Giants starting quarterback Jaxson Dart missing last Sunday’s game against Green Bay with a concussion, and the reality that it was the fourth time he had been tested for a concussion this season, a logical question to ask is: Should Dart not be running with the ball as much as he has been?
Dart had no known injury history at Ole Miss aside from a knee meniscus tear and MCL sprain that occurred in 2021. Let’s provide some context for his pro career to date by looking at his college and pro record compared to other quarterbacks.
College quarterbacks run a lot more than NFL quarterbacks as a general rule. Here are the top 10 running QBs last season from the 2025 draft class:
Dart ran the eighth-most frequently among his classmates, with 100 rushes in 13 games, a bit less than eight per game. 45 of those were scrambles, so Dart had 55 designed runs. He only had three rushing TDs, and three fumbles, so he wasn’t exactly a prime weapon with his legs although he did average about 50 rushing yards per game.
Given that history, you can’t blame ex-Giants head coach Brian Daboll for trying to use Dart’s legs as a weapon. The NFL is a big boy league, though, so running the ball in the pros may not be the same as running it in college against defenders who mostly may never see the NFL.
How does Dart compare to his NFL peers? Let’s first look at the tale of the tape for the 15 most frequently running NFL quarterbacks this season:
Dart is pretty close to average height and weight among his frequently running peers, and he certainly hasn’t run the ball nearly as much as (no surprise) Jalen Hurts, Justin Fields, and Josh Allen, and (big surprise, to me anyway) Drake Maye. He’s run it about as many times as Jayden Daniels, who of course did it in fewer games. That’s because Daniels has been injured three times this season, once with a knee injury that cost him two games, a hamstring injury that cost him another, and now an elbow dislocation that is expected not to be season-ending but has left him thus far with only six games played. Daniels is the slightest in physical stature among the quarterbacks on the list above, but it is his recklessness more than anything that explains his problem this season. It’s no wonder the Commanders are only a game ahead of the Giants after going to the NFC Championship Game last season.
There’s nothing you can do about QB scrambles, other than to have a great pass blocking offensive line, and to have great receivers who get open quickly. The Giants are somewhere in the middle of that equation at this stage, although having their best receiver on the shelf the rest of the year changes the calculation. A play caller does however...
