When will Jaxson Dart start?
That remains unclear, as the Giants prepare to open the season Sunday in Washington with fading veteran Russell Wilson as their starter.
But Dart — and not Wilson — is the Giants’ potential future franchise quarterback. That’s why they traded up to draft him in Round 1 this year.
Legendary Giants quarterback Phil Simms weighed in this week on whether Dart will — and should — get a chance to start in 2025. And he didn’t mince words.
“He will play this year,” Simms told NJ Advance Media. “He will start games. And anybody that says, ‘Well, they should just sit him the whole year and let him learn.’ No, no, that is really stupid. The only way that’s going to happen is if the Giants under Russell Wilson are just winning a lot of games. I mean, a lot — and he’s playing really well.
“Then that might do it. The Giants, I hope, are a really good team this year. They’re going to be much better. But I don’t look at them and just go, ‘Oh, they’re going to have a hard time finding somewhere to insert Jaxson Dart.’”
Dart enters the season second on the depth chart, behind Wilson and ahead of Jameis Winston, another fading veteran. Dart was promoted from third to second, jumping ahead of Winston, after excelling during training camp practices and preseason games.
Simms took notice of those encouraging performances.
“Just judging from what you expect from a rookie quarterback, I think he showed a lot of people — his teammates, the fan base, everybody — that there’s a chance he could be really good," Simms said. “I thought he had a tremendous preseason and handled things well.
“I went to quite a few practices. I watched them scrimmage the Jets a couple times. I never went home after watching him all day — or even studying their film — going, ‘Gee, I don’t know about Jaxson Dart.’ There was never that. It was like, ‘Wow, he connected right away, showed his talent.’
“In fact, he showed more talent in the games, because it was real instead of a practice. Really impressive. So I think Giant fans were really happy with his preseason. The ones that are haters go: ‘We’ll see what happens in the real games.’ Yeah, I know, it’s not the same. But you’ve got to look good in practice before you can look good in the game. And he did that.”
Simms joined NBC this season as a part-time college football analyst. He is scheduled to work three games on Peacock: Illinois’ win last week over Western Illinois, Miami (Ohio) at Rutgers on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. and a to-be-determined third game.
NJ Advance Media’s Brian Fonseca contributed to this story.
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Darryl Slater may be reached atdslater@njadvancemedia.com.
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