JAxon Dart wants you to know something: this is real football. This is not football or flag. This is tryout football where the quarterbacks take to the air. After I'm taking the last ones In a growing collection of crushing hits, Dart shrugged it off and delivered a post-match sermon on resilience. “We don’t play football,” he said. “They'll beat you up. Things happen.”
However, these “things” continue to happen to Darth at an alarming rate. In his eight NFL starts, he has racked up as many unnecessary hits as any rookie quarterback in recent memory. Monday night Dart got another hard blow near the sideline in the first quarter of the Giants' 33-15 loss to the Patriots. Dart scrambled out of the pocket on second-and-13 and ran for the first down. By getting to the sideline, Dart could go out and gain fewer yards while still moving the chains. Instead, he braced himself, lowered his shoulder and was sent flying Patriots linebacker Christian Elliss.
The impact left Peyton Manning, who was covering the game with his brother Eli, speechless. “Apparently he told me he would run out of bounds if he was on the sideline,” Eli Manning said. “He lied to me.”
Dart's recklessness became a defining factor in his young career. He plays like a midfielder in the body of a defender. His style has an old-school charm, the kind of throwback bravado that fans quickly fall in love with. Coaches like it too, until they remember that their job security depends on the quarterback staying conscious.
In another disappointing Giants season, Dart was one of the few promising players. His dynamism provided a boost to an otherwise moribund offense. And that's what a team expects when they trade up to draft a first-round quarterback. But the physical costs turned out to be too high.
It's not just bully coaches or macho fans who love his yards-at-all-costs approach. There is a section of former players who think Dart's recklessness is commendable as a young defenseman on a struggling team fighting for everything. “I don't know when it became okay for us to tell a player to be less competitive,” ESPN's Dan Orlowski said after Dart's latest hit.
But Orlovsky is wrong. A quarterback refusing to make contact is not a weakness. It's about understanding the stakes and recognizing that for his team to have a chance, he needs to stay upright.
Dart's style is dangerous. This is a danger to himself, his health and the future of the Giants. There's a sense that if a quarterback plays with the mindset of the other 21 players on the field, the guys in his group will rally around him. But most of all, the rest of the dressing room wants him on the field. They have mortgages to pay and contracts to earn. Own career – hits They accept and the sacrifices they make – it all depends on whether the starting quarterback is in good shape.
A quarterback's toughness is admirable, but his availability is priceless. Too many times this season, Dart has missed snaps and plays due to unnecessary penalties. He didn't just eat up the hits, he gave them away.
We know more than ever about the effects of blows to the head. The League has achieved significant progress in reducing the overall incidence of concussions during games. Repetitive head impacts have become an integral part of sports with long-term consequences such as Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is an integral part of the game. In the last year alone, nine former and current NFL players under the age of 48 have died. Nation. Of those nine, seven were the result of suicide or unknown causes. We can never say for sure that CTE led to all seven of these deaths, but they hint at the long-term damage that repeated head impacts can cause, not to mention the immediate and long-term effects of suffering one concussion or multiple concussions within a few weeks.
But Dart constantly ridiculed the idea that he should change his style. “I watch quarterbacks who play pretty much the same way I do in the league,” Dart said after the Patriots game. “I watch Josh Allen play, I watch Patrick Mahomes play. They take hits, too. I'm not an anomaly here.”
Every defender takes hits. But there is a difference between capturing them and chasing them.
Elliss' hit did not trigger a concussion protocol. But it was a place Dart had visited too often in his young career. Allen endured one documented head injury during career. In college and in the pros, Mahomes had three documented concussions in 12 years. Dart was already in the league's concussion protocol. four times in his rookie season, including the preseason. The hit in Chicago sidelined him for two weeks with a concussion, his first documented one in the NFL.
This is nothing new for Dart. He always played like that. During the pre-draft cycle, the quarterback sat down with Jon Gruden on his show. QB class. Gruden, infatuated with Dart's potential, treated him like a parent scolding a toddler. “You're a reckless son of a bitch,” Gruden said. “You kind of look like Evel Knievel.” Dart grinned, because of course he did. He thought it was a compliment.
But Gruden continued to insist. “You won’t go overboard,” he said. You won't slip. Gruden prophetically told Dart, “You're going to be in this protocol tent with a concussion, and I'm going to stick to the game plan of, 'Where the hell is Dart?'” Dart was finally forced to admit the truth: It's not smart.. Then came the message: “Every time I get hit, I want to fall two yards forward,” he said.
This is great in college, where a quarterback might start his career for one or two years before committing to a team. NFL. But as far as the pros are concerned, this quarterback mentality is selfish. Their career should be long. The future of the franchise – from the owners to the players, coaches and everyone in the building – depends on the hand of the quarterback. Players are also bigger, faster and stronger. Gaps close faster. Players hit harder. And the careers of defenders depend on destroying the opposing defender, regardless of the short-term or long-term consequences. This is a merciless profession.
But Dart showed no willingness to change. Even in the comments of his own teammates, there is a certain degree of humility. “He is who he is. We'll just have to keep talking to him,” Giants cornerback John Runyan said. “Maybe one of these days he’ll listen to us.”
It's time for the Giants to protect Darth from himself. If that makes him wait until he's ready to take care of himself, then so be it.
Until now they have lived with the consequences. The organization chose Dart as a lifeline for head coach Brian Daboll, the so-called “quarterback whisperer,” who was short on time and quarterbacks. For a while the rate looked reasonable. As the starter, Dart gave the offense new impetus. Daboll leaned toward the quarterback's reckless actions, unable or unwilling to separate what Dart could make of what he must do. With Daboll's job on the line, he showcased Dart's athleticism as a runner by giving him more opportunities to hit in the open field. Smart quarterback runs became the backbone of the offense. In just seven starts under Daboll, Dart recorded 25 designed carries, more than any quarterback in the league. Along with fellow rookie Cam Skattebo, putting his body on the line for extra yardage has become part of the team's mantra.
But this approach failed. Daboll was fired after the Giants started the season 2–8. He was relieved partly because he had failed. protect the young defender. Both because he didn't have his best quarterback on the field in key spots, and because the Giants understand that the future of the franchise depends on the health and development of their rookie. If he is in pain, he will not be able to develop. And his injury record is already raising questions about his viability as a starter.
Daboll was already on thin ice. Earlier this season, he wandered into the blue tent during one of Darth's inspections before being taken to lively discussion with the team doctor on the sidelines. It was coaching despair, disguised as anxiety, that brought him $100,000 fine and the franchisee an additional fine of $200,000. In Daboll's final game in charge, the season's pay came due: Dart hit his head on the turf and was removed from the game after suffering his fourth concussion of the season. Add in ankle and hamstring injuries, and you have a young quarterback taking punishment at an alarming rate.
In his first start under interim trainer Mike Kafka, Dart didn't make a single scheduled snap attempt. This is a clear attempt by the team to get Dart to try and change his style in the final weeks of the season. However, in a swift attempt to escape the coach's control, Dart refused to give up the game when things were going well.
Dart may insist that he has always been this way. Great. But the NFL is not high school or college football. The stakes are too high, the punishment too severe. This is not a place where defenders can outplay strong linebackers or burst through the face of a defender during a meaningless break.
The best defenders develop a sixth sense for determining when an extra yard is worth the bruise and when it is not. But now Darth's momentum has faded. He plays as if the pain is all that matters. It's exciting at times. It's also unsustainable.
“We don’t play football here,” he said. No, that's not true. But this is the NFL, where the bravest thing a quarterback can sometimes do is step out of bounds and survive to beat another player.
