Jaxson Dart Is Giving Giants Fans Hope - and Heartburn
Jaxson Dart is the kind of quarterback who makes you believe anything is possible - and then holds your breath while you wait to see if he gets up. That’s the duality of what the New York Giants are dealing with right now: a young, aggressive signal-caller who flashes franchise potential, but plays the game like he’s got nothing to lose.
Through eight NFL starts, Dart has shown enough to get fans dreaming again. He’s got the arm talent, the mobility, and the moxie to change the trajectory of a franchise that’s spent too much of the last decade searching for answers under center. But with that promise comes a very real concern: can he stay on the field long enough to deliver on that potential?
Dart missed two games after suffering a concussion in Week 10 - the result of a headfirst dive against the Bears that ended with a violent collision. And yet, just a few weeks later, there he was again on Monday night, launching himself toward the sideline only to be sent flying by linebacker Christian Elliss. It was the kind of hit that makes coaches wince and fans gasp, and it made one thing clear: the concussion didn’t scare the aggression out of him.
And according to Dart, it never will.
“This is football,” he said after the game. “I’m going to get hit if I’m in the pocket or outside the pocket.
I feel like I played this way my whole entire life. It shouldn’t be any shocker to anybody if you followed along with my career.
We’re not playing soccer out here. You’re going to get hit.
Things happen. It’s just part of the game.”
That’s who Dart is. He took the Elliss hit in stride - literally. He bounced up, called it a “good hit,” and doubled down on his style of play.
“I’m going to keep playing aggressive,” he said. “Hopefully everybody can take a second to watch my tape going back to high school and realize that this is not a shock.
I play the game aggressively. I took one hit that people are talking about.
I slid. Got out of the way of a lot of hits.”
To his credit, Dart isn’t ignoring the concerns. He understands the stakes, and he’s not brushing off the importance of staying healthy. But he’s also not going to become a completely different player just to avoid contact.
“I appreciate people wanting me to be healthy and all that stuff and I want to be healthy, too,” he added. “I play this game aggressively. I’m not just going to change how I play the game.”
That toughness is part of what makes him so compelling. It’s also what makes him a bit of a wild card.
There are moments when that fearlessness can swing a game in the Giants’ favor. And there are others when it puts the entire season at risk.
That’s the fine line the Giants need Dart to learn how to walk - and that line isn’t always easy for young quarterbacks to see, let alone stay on.
General manager Joe Schoen knows this all too well. He’s seen it before.
“We’ve been through this before [with Josh Allen in Buffalo] and what makes these players great is their toughness, their competitiveness, their desire to win,” Schoen said. “You appreciate that about Jaxson, but you also have to be available and try not to take the unnecessary hits.”
That’s the balance: don’t dull the edge that makes Dart dangerous, but teach him when to slide, when to step out, and when to live to fight another down.
“You’ve got to be smart when you can get down and not have to take unnecessary hits,” Schoen added. “You’ve got to take advantage of those opportunities so you can live to see another day.”
It’s easy to forget how quickly a promising career can be derailed. Just ask Robert Griffin III.
He was the league’s Rookie of the Year in 2012, a dynamic dual-threat talent who looked like a star in the making - until a devastating knee injury changed everything. He played until 2020, but mostly as a backup.
The Giants don’t want that for Dart. They want longevity.
They want stability. They want someone who can bring the kind of consistency Eli Manning gave them for 16 seasons.
Dart gets it. He studies the guys who’ve figured it out - the Josh Allens, the Patrick Mahomeses - and sees himself in them.
“I watch quarterbacks who play kind of like me around the league,” Dart said. “I watch how Josh Allen plays, I watch how Patrick Mahomes plays. They take hits, too, so I’m not an anomaly here.”
He’s not wrong. Allen takes hits.
Mahomes makes plays on the move. But there’s nuance in how they do it.
Allen is a physical outlier - 6-foot-5, 237 pounds, and likely heavier than that. He’s built like a linebacker and moves like a tight end.
Mahomes, meanwhile, is a magician at avoiding the big shot. He knows how to make defenders hesitate, how to slide just enough to avoid the worst of it, how to sell a hit for a flag when it counts.
Dart, listed at 6-2 and 223, doesn’t have Allen’s size or Mahomes’ slipperiness. That doesn’t mean he can’t thrive - it just means he has to be smarter about when to take the hit and when to get down.
Other quarterbacks have figured it out. Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson - they’ve developed an instinct for self-preservation in the open field.
Dart doesn’t have to stop being aggressive. He just has to learn when the risk outweighs the reward.
Because here’s the thing: the Giants don’t need Dart to be a superhero every play. They need him to be available.
They need him to be smart. And if he can find that balance, the flashes we’ve seen - the Mahomes-like improvisation, the Allen-esque grit, the Burrow-level processing - could turn into something special.
The Giants are betting on it. And so are their fans.