Jaxson Dart Can’t Save Giants’ Season, But Could He Save Brian Daboll’s Job?

All John Mara said he wanted out of this season was “to be in a better mood” than he was at the end of last year. There was no playoff demand, no win threshold, no bar that had to be reached. The owner just wanted to feel good enough to not blow it all up again.

Three games into the season, though, that seems like an impossible dream with his Giants 0-3 and fading toward another season of oblivion. And surely by now, head coach Brian Daboll knows it. He’s looked at the brutal schedule, surveyed his team, and realizes he probably can’t win enough games this season to change his boss’ mood and save his job.

So on Tuesday, he played the only other card he had. He benched veteran quarterback Russell Wilson in favor of rookie Jaxson Dart. It was a desperation move, made far earlier than the Giants ever expected they’d have to make it.

And while it probably won’t be enough to save the Giants’ season, it could end up saving Daboll’s job.

Can rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart save Brian Daboll’s job? We’re about to find out. (Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

That’s probably not why he did it — at least not the only reason — but it sure is an unavoidable consequence of the drastic move. When this season began, there were only two visible paths to a happier John Mara. Winning games — maybe even just half of the Giants’ games — was the most obvious one.

But with that out the window, the only other play was to make sure he felt better about 2026 by the end of 2025. And putting the Giants’ Quarterback of the Future on display for the next 14 games certainly has a chance to do that.

Because this season now is about something more important than wins and losses. It is all about the development of Dart, the 22-year-old the Giants loved enough to trade back into the first round to draft 25th overall back in April. Everything Dart has done since then has lit a fire in the organization. Publicly and privately, they can’t talk enough about how impressed they are with his rapid growth.

They still wanted him to sit, though. Their plan was always to ride Wilson, a 10-time Pro Bowler and possible future Hall of Famer, as far as his 36-year-old body could take them. They believed Dart’s best path to being their starter next season was to watch and learn as much as he could.

But Wilson’s play made that impossible. Yes, he had a brilliant day in Dallas two weeks ago, throwing for 450 yards and three touchdowns. But his play in the other two games was just terrible. The final straw came Sunday night in a game the Kansas City Chiefs seemed to be holding out there for the Giants to take. Wilson was 18-of-32 for 160 yards and two interceptions, and was particularly putrid in the red zone where his throws out the back of the end zone gave his team no chance at all.

Could Dart have done any better against a tough, Steve Spaguolo-led defense? Who knows? Just like it’s impossible to know yet if Dart will do any better against a schedule that has the Giants playing against four currently undefeated teams in the next six weeks, starting with the 3-0 Los Angeles Chargers in the Meadowlands on Sunday afternoon.

Rookie quarterbacks, no matter how promising, often struggle. And it’s not like the Giants are able to suddenly build a better team around him. They’ll still have the same leaky offensive line, the same questionable rushing attack, and the same offensive scheme that hasn’t exactly worked well in the recent past.

So maybe the wins won’t come flooding in. But wins are no longer the point. Sure, at some point on Wednesday, Daboll will probably say he made the switch because Dart gives the Giants the best chance to win. But it’s not about wins as much as it’s about growth.

For proof, just let Giants history be the guide. In 2004, the Giants were 5-4 when Tom Coughlin benched veteran Kurt Warner and replaced him with the franchise’s quarterback of the future, Eli Manning. For four games, Manning was terrible. Over the next two, he was better. And by the time he helped the Giants beat the Cowboys in New York’s season finale to finish 6-10, the entire franchise couldn’t wait for the next season to get started.

The same was true in 2019 when Pat Shurmer replaced Manning with a young Daniel Jones in Week 3. Jones won his first two starts before losing his next eight, and the Giants ended up with a 4-12 record. But the arrival of Jones gave them something they hadn’t had since their last Super Bowl championship.

Hope.

That’s what Dart represents now. And that hope is almost as important as wins for a franchise that has been to the playoffs twice in the past 13 seasons and has had double-digit losses nine of the past 11 years. The Giants need a reason to believe in a brighter future. They need to believe that things will eventually be OK.

Colin Cowherd reacts to Jaxson Dart being named Giants starter

And if Daboll, the offensive whiz who helped turn Bills quarterback Josh Allen from an erratic young passer into the MVP he is today, can get Dart to show a little promise, to have his arrow pointing up at season’s end, then maybe the final record this season won’t matter. Maybe that’ll be enough to lift everyone’s mood.

Maybe. There are no guarantees, of course. Maybe enough losses will still mount that Mara won’t be able to take it anymore. But the way this season was going, there simply weren’t going to be enough wins to save Daboll with Wilson at the helm anyway. Wilson represented the past. He was always a stop-gap quarterback. 

Dart is the one who represents the promise of what’s to come.

Daboll’s job now is to make sure that future looks bright, that Dart keeps taking at least small steps forward. The fourth-year coach needs to be able to show his boss at the end of the season that he and Dart make an incredible team, record be damned. He needs to have at least some evidence to show that he’s the right coach to turn Dart into a star.

Anything less, and as much as Mara won’t want to do it, he’ll have to blow everything up around Dart and start over with someone else. Because the Giants’ future is now firmly in Dart’s hands. He is the most important thing in the entire organization for the foreseeable future.

And if his bright future arrives fast enough, maybe Daboll will get to go along for the ride.

Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He spent six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.

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