Jaxson Dart makes strong first impression at Giants rookie minicamp
Giants head coach Brian Daboll with Jaxson Dart during the first day of rookie minicamp on Friday. Credit: Ed Murray
Jaxson Dart made his much-anticipated on-field debut with the Giants at Friday’s rookie minicamp practice. His ascension as the team’s next leader, perhaps an even more significant coronation, came the night before.
After the official first meetings wrapped Thursday evening, Dart gathered as many offensive players as he could find for an impromptu prep talk.
“We all got together and made sure we went through the script,” Dart said of discussing the plays that would be run the next day. “As the quarterback, you have to make sure everybody knows what they are doing.”
The location of that display of unofficial captaincy is what made the confab unique. It was on the bus ride between the facility and the hotel where the players are spending this weekend. Dart was making sure his teammates for this weekend — many of whom are tryouts he will never see again after Sunday — were prepared for what was coming their way. And he did it while puttering down Route 3 in New Jersey.
Talk about being a mobile quarterback!
“That made coming out here on the field, the operation, a lot smoother,” Dart said after the Friday workout. “Everybody was a lot more confident and could play a lot faster.”
These are the soft skills that helped the Giants’ coaches and evaluators fall for Dart in the pre-draft process and pushed them to trade up and select him in the first round last month, and they were on display Friday for all to see.
The arm? The athleticism? Anyone can grade those. They needed to know if Dart could thrive in the G-forces that come from being quarterback of the Giants and whether he had the personality to handle all of the peripheral tasks that come with the job.
So far, so good.
Dart started Friday’s news conference by asking reporters to state their names so he could get to know them. Cute. He talked about going through the pre-draft process with Giants coach Brian Daboll after having watched the coach’s notoriously grueling whiteboard sessions in action last offseason on “Hard Knocks” (even though he saw the highlights of those episodes only on TikTok).
Dart then chuckled about stealing his younger sister’s necklace, the one with the gaudy heart-shaped shining stones, which has become a good-luck charm for him. He was asked if he’ll keep the jersey number he was assigned for this camp and said he will wait to see how he looks wearing the 6 in pictures.
Regarding the veterans he’ll be working with this season, Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston, he said: “Golly, they’ve been great.”
And after much outside discussion over the way Dart starts plays, clapping his hands together at Ole Miss for the snap but now having to bark a verbal cadence here in the NFL, Dart spoke about how the transition went on the first day.
“Did you guys hear me when I was out there?” he asked the reporters with a smile.
We did. That and everything else, from the folksy to the flamboyant.
He’s winning over his teammates with the same confidence and charm, too.
“I love that kid right there already,” said defensive tackle Darius Alexander, the Giants’ third-round pick. “High energy, high motor. He wants to go out there and compete, so I love him. Just to see him go out there and run, be alert and lead the offense is great.”
“I’ve talked to him the last 24 hours and he’s one of the smartest I’ve been around,” said running back Cam Skattebo, a fourth-round pick. “I can’t wait to continue to see what he does.”
As for the actual football part, Dart didn’t do much on Friday. Nobody really did during the 90 or so minutes of mostly drills and stretching. He did run 11 seven-on-seven plays out of the huddle, which was the extent of any competitive work he put in.
None of them were deep throws or complicated reads or required him to move from the pocket, but he displayed a strong arm and put the ball where it needed to go. After drops on the first two passes he threw, he completed nine straight to cap his afternoon.
At one point, sure enough, two of his teammates were lined up in the wrong place off to his right. Dart calmly straightened them out before receiving the snap and completing that play.
First impressions are notoriously unreliable, especially around here. During Eli Manning’s rookie minicamp, he was so erratic that one of his passes intended for a running back hit a nearby tackling dummy. John Mara’s eyes were wide with trepidation and buyer’s remorse — this is what we traded all those picks for? — but two Super Bowl championships helped soothe those initial bumps.
Daniel Jones, meanwhile, was poised and precise in his rookie camp debut in 2019. The biggest story from that day was the fellow draft pick at wide receiver who couldn’t seem to hold on to the football. Jones took all the blame for Darius Slayton’s many drops even though his passes seemed pretty darn accurate. Six years later, Jones is long gone from the Giants’ plans and that greasy-handed fifth-round pick with the inauspicious start is still here. Slayton just signed a third contract with the team in March, this one for three years.
How will Dart’s debut resonate in the coming years? We’ll see if there is any eventual correlation. For now, Dart and the Giants believe there will be, and that’s all we can go by.
“If you don’t see yourself playing at the highest level, you shouldn’t even be between the lines in the first place, especially as the quarterback leading the guys around you,” Dart said. “I come prepared. I’m confident when I step between those lines.”
And, just as important, everywhere else he goes, too.
Even on the bus.
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.
