Big Blue View
The Giants have to get this right
The Jaxson Dart Development Plan.
It took the New York Giants two years GM Joe Schoen called “exhausting” to determine that Dart was the quarterback in whose hands they wanted to place the franchise’s future and in whose hands Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll would put their reputations and future employment.
There were thousands of man-hours invested. Grinding tape. Riding airplanes. Staying in hotels. Watching games and practices. Gathering information from anyone and everyone who had insight into two draft classes worth of quarterback prospects. All-Star games. The Combine. Pro Days. Dinners. Private workouts. Missed holidays and family time. Meetings upon meetings between the front office, coaching staff, and ownership to get on the same page and make the best possible decision.
The Giants tried in vain a year ago to trade up in the draft for Drake Maye. They decided to pass on J.J. McCarthy, Michael Penix Jr., and Bo Nix. They fell into and out of love with Shedeur Sanders.
The entire process, one which Schoen said again and over the two years was very specific and had been developed by Daboll more than a decade earlier, finally led the Giants to trade up from No. 34 to No. 25 in the draft to select Dart.
Schoen said it was “gratifying” for the organization “to get a guy that we’re convicted on and we like.”
Daboll now has a quarterback of his choosing he can mold from Day 1 of his NFL career.
“I think he’s got a lot of qualities you look for in a good quarterback. He’s tough, makes good decisions with the football, pushes the ball down the field, has athletic ability, played in a really tough conference, started there at USC as a young guy,” Daboll said. “But did a really good job throughout this process of our meetings, board work, workouts, and the tape that we liked.
“I like the way he plays. I like his competitive fire. I like his accuracy. I like his ability, again, to push the ball down the field. His athletic ability to run with the football.”
Now, though, a whole new phase of the work begins.
The Giants are not going to lay that out in detail for the world to know, dissect, and ultimately pick apart.
“The process of developing a quarterback is just that,” 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.
“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...
