Big Blue View
When will the Jaxson Dart era officially begin?
When will Jaxson Dart start?
That, simply, is the New York Giants’ biggest question at quarterback entering the 2025 season.
Sure, there are other questions. Does 37-year-old Russell Wilson, coming off failed stints with the Denver Broncos and Pittsburgh Steelers, have enough in the tank to help the Giants win a decent number of games? Where does Jameis Winston fit? What will happen to Tommy DeVito?
The question that matters, though, is when will the Dart era begin?
The Giants have said again and again, though some still don’t want to believe them, that Wilson will be their Week 1 starter. Unless injury strikes, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to doubt that.
The idea of allowing Dart to begin his career by developing behind the scenes while watching Wilson and Winston is a solid one. Dart was not a top three pick in the draft. He was 25th. He is 22 years old, youngest quarterback in the 2025 draft class.
The Giants understand that the Dart of today is not a finished product. Here is an excerpt from a piece I did in the spring:
“The process of developing a quarterback is just that,” [Brian] Daboll said. “So we’re going to do everything we can to develop him and bring him along.
“I don’t expect him to know everything right off the bat. It’s a hard position to play, a hard position to coach. But he has the traits that we look for and covet in a guy to be able to learn and grow.
“We’re going to do everything we can to develop him.”
“So his expectations coming in is just to improve every day, soak it up like a sponge, learn from the coaches, learn from the veteran quarterbacks in the room, try to improve every day he can in terms of his understanding of the system. And then once we get on the field, the physical part of it, that’s what we’re looking for from him right now is to grow each and every day with a positive mindset, and I think he has the tools physically and mentally to do that.”
[Joe] Schoen concurred.
“We traded up for him. We’re ecstatic to have him. He’s got a lot of makings of a good quarterback, and there’s a long way to go,” Schoen said. “There’s a developmental process that he’s going to have to go through. Again, these offenses are not easy to learn, and the execution has to be at a high level.”
Offensive coordinator Mike Kafka has indicated the Giants have a benchmark-driven multi-year plan for Dart’s development.
*“I think whenever you draft a quarterback early, you want to have a plan or some semblance of a plan or schedule put in place to understand that it’s not really a one-week [plan]; it’s a six-month, one-year, two-year type plan for really any player,” Kafka said. “For any player you get you want to see what...
