Jaxson Dart's second Giants season could be his leap year
Jaxson Dart of the New York Giants against the San Francisco 49ers at MetLife Stadium on Nov. 2, 2025. Credit: Jim McIsaac
FOXBOROUGH, Mass.
The Giants already have lost to Jayden Daniels, Bo Nix and Caleb Williams this season. On Monday night, they faced Drake Maye and the Patriots at Gillette Stadium. Still ahead are a potential next meeting with Daniels and J.J. McCarthy, assuming they are cleared to play by then.
Welcome to the tour of second-year quarterbacks.
Just about all of them have risen quickly to impressive levels, already have been to or are poised to carry their teams to the postseason, and collectively represent the future of the NFL.
For the Giants, it has been a discouraging reminder of what they missed out on when they failed to land their quarterback in the 2024 draft.
But it also has provided a glimpse of what they should be aspiring to next season when they are the team in position to benefit from their own second-year quarterback bounce.
Jaxson Dart is still a rookie and had started only seven games heading into Monday, but he already has become the cornerstone for whatever happens next with the Giants.
No one can say for sure who the head coach or general manager or defensive coordinator of the team will be next season, but, barring some calamitous injury in the next few weeks, it’s a pretty safe bet who the starting quarterback will be.
And when he is, he’ll ideally make the same kind of jump that Nix, Williams and Maye have made. The kind of jump that second-year quarterbacks have been using to propel themselves and their teams forward for the past few seasons.
“The more experience you bank, the more comfortability you get in the system, the more comfortability you get in playing, and the more comfortability you get with the players you’re out there with, you take that next step,” said Giants interim head coach Mike Kafka, who was on the staff in Kansas City when Patrick Mahomes made his big leap from riding the bench as a rookie to the 2018 MVP of the league.
“You continue to build on things that you do well and then the things that you struggle with, you really tie that down and look in the offseason and you look at how you can improve in those areas. The better players, the best players in the league, they do that. They evaluate themselves and figure out how they can get better.”
Or, more succinctly, as the late Hall of Fame college basketball coach Al McGuire famously said before the one-and-done era in his sport: “The best thing about freshmen is that they become sophomores.”
There was a streak of recent years when three second-year quarterbacks nearly won three straight MVP awards. Mahomes did it in 2018 and Lamar Jackson did it in 2019. Carson Wentz was on his way to winning the award in 2017, but his knee injury derailed that bid; the Eagles had to settle for a Super Bowl championship with backup Nick Foles.
In terms the Giants know well, go all the way back to Eli Manning. He won only one start as a rookie. The following year, he and the Giants won the division title.
If the season had ended after Sunday, Nix and Williams would get the byes as top seeds in the playoffs. Maye still could get that with the Patriots. And Maye has figured strongly in MVP conversations for the past month.
Giants backup quarterback Jameis Winston, who started the previous two games while Dart was sidelined by a concussion, said he is a big fan of what Maye has accomplished in his second season.
“I’m very proud of him and what he’s doing,” Winston said, noting the presence of coaches Mike Vrabel and Josh McDaniels and skill players Stefon Diggs, TreVeyon Henderson and Hunter Henry in that development. “What they’re building around him is something that’s special.”
Added Winston: “I think that’s something that you’re going to see here with the New York Football Giants with Jaxson Dart already showing that he can be a superstar quarterback in this league.”
For that to happen, a lot of things need to take place. It’s not all on Dart.
It should be noted that in his head-to-head losses to Nix and Williams, Dart outplayed both and left the field with a lead. So there is a lot the Giants have to do. They can’t just sit back and wait.
Continuity in coaching used to be the primary influence, but that’s no longer the case. Williams and Maye both had staffing overhauls that helped rather than hampered them. And each of those teams used the offseason to build around their precious commodity.
Dart should at least have Malik Nabers and Cam Skattebo back with him next year. If the Giants can keep their offensive line somewhat together, that will help him, too. Then there will be free agents and draft picks added, all of them brought in for the purpose of making Dart better and therefore making the Giants better.
That was something the Giants whiffed on with Daniel Jones.
After a rookie season with a promising 26 touchdowns (24 of them passing), he totaled 24 in the next two seasons. The Giants’ top draft picks in those two years included Andrew Thomas (a hit) but also Kadarius Toney (a huge miss). Their big free-agent acquisitions on offense in that stretch were Kenny Golladay and Kyle Rudolph. Eventually the mismanagement of the O-line led to the series of injuries and distrust that ended Jones’ time as a Giant.
If those kinds of moves happen again, all the promise of Dart will sputter away too. And pretty soon, the Giants will be on another tour looking at quarterbacks with envy rather than hope.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
