Big Blue View
The future is now for the New York Giants.
News broke on Tuesday afternoon that rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart has been named the starter against the Los Angeles Chargers.
The move comes as the Giants fall to 0-3 on the season, including performances against the Washington Commanders and Kansas City Chiefs that saw them score just 15 points. All along, there have been calls for Dart to start following an excellent performance in the preseason in which he went 32 of 47, for 372 yards and 3 touchdowns to no interceptions. He showed off his athleticism, competitiveness, arm talent, and a level of football IQ that surprised those who didn’t study him closely in college.
But for as well as Dart played in the pre-season, the question remains:
Is he ready?
That’s the dilemma in which Brian Daboll has found himself. The Giants have (or perhaps “had”) a plan for developing Dart and likely wanted him to incubate at his own pace. They’ve been adamant that Dart has impressed at every step of the way and he had hit the marks they set for him over the summer.
However, the offense has been failing and fans were chanting “We Want Dart!” while Russell Wilson was on the field. So ready or not, the pressure was on to make the change.
So let’s take a closer look at Dart’s work in the preseason and see what he did well, as what he (hopefully) spent the last month working on.
Dart was incredibly exciting during the Giants’ preseason.
He absolutely earned all the excitement and hype generated against the Buffalo Bills, New York Jets, and New England Patriots. However, the good vibes and positive outcomes also served to cover up some real foundational that need to be addressed before Dart can be consistently successful in an NFL offense, against NFL defenses.
The Giants don’t want to be rigidly mechanical in their offense. They need to maintain a level of flexibility and fluidity in their play to allow them to adapt on the fly. But there’s a time and a place to go out of structure, and Dart needs to learn that NFL offenses require a certain amount of fidelity to the structure in order to function as intended. Going outside of the structure of the play, or riffing unnecessarily, can make life harder on his teammates and hurt the offense as a whole.
For example, let’s take a look at this second-down play against the Patriots. Dart had just been sacked for a 6-yard loss on first down, and ultimately found Greg Dulcich for a 13-yard gain on a crossing route.
The Giants are in a 3×2 set, with Dulcich as the middle receiver.
Dart checks Beaux Collins (8) in the slot on the bottom of the screen first, but quickly moves off the read. That was the correct read and not the problem here, nor is going to Dulcich...
