NEW ORLEANS — Last week Jaxson Dart sat in front of his locker after the game and his teammates and coaches came to him. They took turns congratulating him, patting him on the shoulders, even hugging him following his first NFL victory. He collected the praise like a bride receiving bulging envelopes on her wedding day.
This time, though, it was Dart who made the rounds.
In a very somber, very stunned, very disappointed space deep inside the Superdome as his teammates tried to process the 26-14 loss they had just endured to the previously winless Saints, the quarterback tried to get to as many of them as he could. Then he delivered a series of quick individual messages, some with different words but all with the same tone.
“’This one is on me,’” he said he told them, “‘and I’ll get better.”
The first part is an exaggeration of course. Dart did make his share of mistakes in the game but he wasn’t the one who allowed the Saints to climb back from a 14-3 hole with a momentum-swinging 87-yard touchdown pass in the second quarter. He wasn’t the one who dropped the couple of catchable passes that would have extended drives. He wasn’t on a defense that made zero impact plays against a quarterback who had lost his first 10 career starts.
And even though he did record three turnovers, he wasn’t the one who fumbled late in the first half to allow the Saints to take the lead or on the first play of the fourth quarter to end an otherwise productive and potentially game-altering 12-play drive that had reached the New Orleans 12 when they were still down by 5.
Which brings us to the second part of that postgame point he was promulgating. The bit about getting better.
The game had ended, but that was already happening.
This season of firsts for Dart will have plenty more of them in the coming weeks and months, but on Sunday he was able to tick off his first road game, first fumble, his first (and second) interception, and, yes, his first loss.
His first NFL humbling.
So all eyes inside and outside the organization were suddenly on him to see how he would react to the sloppy defeat. He became a human Rorschach. And unlike his and the Giants’ performance on the field, he did not disappoint.
He owned it and put it on himself. All of it. Even though that clearly wasn’t the complete story.
“Quarterbacks are measured by wins and losses,” he said. “I take that to heart. I felt like I was the one who should have been putting our team in a better situation to get a win in this game.”
Later he added: “I’m the leader of the offense so I think anytime those things happen it kind of falls back on the leaders. There is a responsibility when you are the quarterback to go win games and that’s just the standard I hold myself to.”
None of that came across as just words that players are supposed to say but rather as heartfelt emotion. This loss bugged Dart for many reasons. And that’s good. Too often players think there is strength in shrugging things off. Dart was deeply disappointed and let that show. Clearly things can tilt too much in that direction with tantrums and distracting actions, but Dart wasn’t close to reaching that territory. We’ve witnessed plenty of Giants quarterbacks after losses in recent years and frankly it was nice to see something other than stoicism. Something human and honest.
This wasn’t going to be a straight, uninterrupted ascent for Dart no matter how good he looked last week and how great he looked early in this game when he led two touchdown drives capped with passes to Theo Johnson. At 22, Dart is the youngest starting quarterback in the NFL and there were always going to be chutes to go along with the ladders he was climbing. Brian Daboll said as much when he named Dart his starter just about two weeks ago.
It was convenient to ignore that warning after his first win, but it still applies to this project and Dart’s continued development.
“That’s the NFL,” Daboll said of the lesson from this game. “Every play matters and he knows that. He’s as hard on himself as anybody. There was a lot to learn from this [loss] and that’s what we’ll do.”
A lot for Dart to learn, yes. About ball security and passing precision and decision-making, all of which were far from ideal. But also a lot for the Giants to learn about him.
“I think he handled it pretty well, as well as he could,” said veteran receiver Darius Slayton, whose deep drop, inability to bring in a flea-flicker and fumble were three big sins in this loss. “In my head I really don’t know that he struggled quite frankly. Pretty much every mistake he made we probably could have helped him out.”
Said defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence of his advice for Dart: “Shake it, man. (Expletive] is gonna happen. You just shake it and you move on to the next play. You are going to have games like that but you don’t let them stay.”
Will Dart be able to do that?
“I think so,” Lawrence said.
Dart won’t have much time for moping. The Giants play the Eagles on Thursday night at MetLife Stadium.
Dart’s coronation as the player who the Giants are counting on to turn them around, to lead them to success, and ultimately to make them consistent winners, may have been a bit premature.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t going to happen, though.
Dart had some of his flaw exposed on Sunday. Just about all of the Giants did. Yet in the long run — and that’s what really matters with rookie quarterbacks — what he showed in the immediate aftermath of the loss may be more significant than any play he has yet to make or not make on the field in his first two games.
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.
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