It does not take long to sense that Jaxson Dart is comfortable with himself, around his teammates — even those he just met — in interview settings with the media, as the centerpiece of an offense and as the face of a program. He is the quarterback and acts like it.
What cannot be known just yet, from the outside, looking in, is how much Dart knows about what he is doing when he is on the field.
How quick of a study he is. How his command of everything around him compares with other young players thrust into a new situation. How he is able to take what he has learned and share it with the guys in his huddle.
First impressions are not always accurate but sometimes they are.
The Giants traded back up into the first round of the NFL draft to select Dart, a three-year starter at Ole Miss, with the 25th overall pick. On Friday, as rookie minicamp kicked off, Dart already was on his way to bringing followers to his cause.
“I mean he’s incredibly smart,” rookie running back Cam Skattebo said after a one-hour practice that was moved indoors to escape the rain. “I’ve talked to him the last 24 hours and the kid is incredibly smart. He’s one of the smartest I’ve been around, and he did a great job with the seven-on-seven play calls, snap counts and all of that, and making sure everybody was in line. I can’t wait to see what he does and what he’s capable of.’’
This is a good sign but not an essential immediate ingredient in what the Giants have cooking up for Dart. There is no urgency to get him ready to roll, as he arrives as the No. 3 quarterback, behind starter Russell Wilson and backup Jameis Winston, two veterans signed as free agents.
Dart is the presumed starter of the future. Will that be sometime during the 2025 season? Will his ascension wait until 2026? There are so many factors at work with all this.
Dart, 21, sounds interested in learning as much as he can as quickly as he can.
“Yeah, as a quarterback you’re the one, you run the ship when you’re out there,” he said. “So, if you don’t know the ins and outs of everything, you’re not going to have everybody around you prepared. And I think that that’s super important. It’s very important to have that mindset coming to work each and every day.
“And I think that that also raises the bar for everybody around you. And I think that if you want to be a great team and you want to compete at the highest level, that’s definitely how you have to be as a quarterback.”
Dart participated in the 7 on 7 period, on the field for 10 snaps and his passes were thrown with plenty of accuracy and pace.
He had the plays relayed to him into his helmet radio by offensive coordinator Mike Kafka via walkie-talkie.
Players on Thursday evening were given the script for the practice session and Dart made sure to go over it with his new teammates on the bus ride from the Giants facility to the hotel where the rookies are housed for the two-day camp.
“As the quarterback, you got to make sure that everybody knows what they’re doing,” Dart said. “So, I tried to get as many guys as I could together on the offensive side of the ball and go through it and teach everybody, making sure that we’re all on the same page.”
The teaching is going well.
The first-year guys are constantly getting information and then asked to regurgitate that information, often with rapid-fire responses. No one gets everything right. It sounds as if Dart is getting a whole lot right, though.
“I mean coaches say things and if you answer it fast and right, that’s hard to do, especially with the nerves and everything that rack up as a rookie,” Skattebo said. “The head coach asks you a question and you know the answer like that, you’re into your books and you’re very smart and just talking to [Dart] about football and certain routes and play calls and just hearing him hear a call one time and being able to call it multiple times back to back, it’s just something that he does well.”
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Dart said he and head coach Brian Daboll “were able to just form an organic relationship,” during the lengthy pre-draft getting-to-know-you process. He said the Giants “tested me harder than any other team.”
Dart passed enough of the tests for the Giants to trade up to get him. There are plenty more in store for him, though, as NFL quarterbacks are not made in a day.
