Jaxson Dart’s injury will force Giants to make a crucial QB decision ... again | Politi
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It might be time to fly another banner over MetLife Stadium, Giants fans, only this time the message behind the airplane shouldn’t be targeting the decision-makers on the ground.
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It’s for the football gods looking down from above.
WHATEVER WE DID, WE’RE SORRY!!!
Honestly, what else can you say at this point? A season that started with so much excitement and promise in the opener effectively ended just three and a half lousy minutes into Week 2.
Quarterback Jaxson Dart is done. Giants general manager Joe Schoen and head coach John Harbaugh did their best to speak the opposite outcome into existence, with Schoen first proclaiming that Dart was “going to be OK” before Harbaugh trumpeted the “really good news” on the knee injury his quarterback suffered in the first quarter on Monday night.
The MRI offered a different opinion on the situation, and while the Giants refused to say if Dart was lost for the season (or anything else that offered clarity), it’s clear that the team’s franchise passer won’t play another meaningful down in 2026. Dart missing even a couple of games would have derailed the season.
A couple months? Forget it.
Backup Jameis Winston looked about as comfortable in the pocket in a 28-6 loss to the Los Angeles Rams as he would auditioning for a role in Hamilton — and, lately, it seems like he’s spent more time focused on the latter than on his day job. The Giants are squarely back in Quarterback Hell, a dark place they had hoped they wouldn’t see for at least another decade after trading up to grab Dart in the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft.
They might get comfortable with the skin-boiling temperatures again. This franchise likely will face a major decision about its future quarterback long before anyone expected.
It is agonizing to even consider given the pile of lost seasons Giants fans have endured in recent years, but it’s time to face the reality that this team might find itself at the top of the NFL Draft again in the spring. If that happens, can Schoen and Harbaugh really operate as if they have their quarterback?
A franchise quarterback must prove he can stay on the field, and between this injury and his frequent trips to the blue medical tent as a rookie, there is no evidence that Dart can pass that test. No one is questioning the former Ole Miss passer’s toughness, and sure, Dart might prove to be a stable, 17-game starter with better luck (and decent blocking).
The Giants’ braintrust can’t count on that, though, especially not when Dart hasn’t proven that he is the guy in his short career and not when this is a rare draft loaded with top-end quarterback talent.
As many as four quarterbacks — Arch Manning (Texas), Dante Moore (Oregon), Darian Mensah (Miami) and CJ Carr (Notre Dame) — could go in the top 10 in the upcoming draft. The Giants will hope that their improved defense and coaching will keep them away from a pick that high, but Dart’s injury makes it very possible that they’ll already be in position to draft his replacement.
Look: They won’t have to do that. They love Dart, who is still just 23 and will have two years left on his rookie contract. But they wouldn’t be the first team that hit reset so quickly after taking a first-round quarterback. The Patriots thought they had their guy in Mac Jones in 2021, then finally found him three years later in Drake Maye.
Are the Giants confident enough in Dart’s potential that they’d pass on an elite prospect at the sport’s most important position? Are they certain enough in Dart’s ability to stay healthy that they’d bet flushing another season on that?
And, taking these hypotheticals to the extreme, would they really not move earth and heaven and as much draft capital as possible if they were in position to draft Eli Manning’s talented nephew?
This was, as you can guess, the furthest thing from Harbaugh’s mind on Tuesday afternoon.
“I can tell you this. If you get punched in the gut, are you going down? Are you going down?” Harbaugh asked reporters on a conference call. “Are you going to crumple to the ground, as Jack Harbaugh would say, like a sack of sour apples and just fall to the ground and just rot away and wither away into the dust. Is that what you’re going to do?
“I don’t think so. I don’t think so.”
It seems impossible, almost unfair, that Harbaugh is already leaning on his sack-of-sour-apples speeches in mid-September. In Week 1, his Giants looked like they’d have a shot at crashing the playoffs in the way they pushed around the Dallas Cowboys in front of a home crowd that hadn’t been that jacked in years.
Then, in Week 2, the season went up in flames in just three and a half lousy minutes. That means the Giants will have a major decision to make after a few months spent contemplating a familiar question:
What did they do to make the football gods so angry?
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