Big Blue View
MetLife Stadium is just across the parking lot from the New York Giants’ practice facility. Players look at the louvred gray lady every time they practice at, or even report to Quest Diagnostics Training Center.
Rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart will debut inside MetLife on Saturday night in a preseason game against the New York Jets. As close as it is to where Dart has been learning his NFL craft, Saturday will be just Dart’s second time inside the building and his first as a player.
The other time? For a Zach Bryan concert.
Dart remembers “just standing there and being able to look at all the great players’ names in the stadium and then just kind of seeing the atmosphere and trying to picture what a sold-out stadium is going to be like and just the energy involved.”
Preseason game that doesn’t count or not, Dart is looking forward to playing in front of Giants fans. And, yes, we know there will also be Jets fans in the building.
“I can’t wait,” Dart said earlier in the week. “It’s going to be a lot of fun. I hope that the fans come out, and they’re super passionate. I hope that we can make a home field advantage for us. But I can’t wait, and I know that there’s going to be a lot of energy for sure.”
Dart drew raves for his preseason debut against the Buffalo Bills, during which he went 12 of 19 for 154 yards with a touchdown and a 106.0 passer rating after taking over from Russell Wilson midway through the first quarter.
I wrote after the game that “Dart showed the New York Giants everything they hoped to see from the rookie quarterback.”
Former NFL quarterback Chase Daniel was banging the drum after the game for Giants head coach Brian Daboll to give Dart the keys to the franchise right now.
That is not going to happen Week 1. Still, it is going to happen in the not-too-distant future.
The idea, as we sit here on August 16 in the middle of the preseason, that this will be a redshirt year for Dart, seems ludicrous. The way he has performed to date, the confident “I know I’m a starting quarterback” way in which he carries himself for a rookie, and both the attention Daboll pays to Dart and the way he speaks about the 22-year-old rookie scream otherwise.
Daboll was asked this week about a particular throw Dart made during one of the joint practices against the Jets.
“I think when you have players that have instincts, which that’s a very important quality to have at any position, certainly at the quarterback position, those have to take over. You don’t want guys that are box thinkers,” Daboll said. “He’s got good vision. He’s got good awareness. There’s going to be times where, he’s a young player, that he gets tricked or maybe doesn’t do the thing you want him to do, and then you just...
