Giants Jaxson Dart taking cues from best QBs as he looks for strong finish to his rookie season
Of course he watched football.A week off for Jaxson Dart did not include taking much time away. Get texts from Paul Schwartz with all the latest Giants news and insights, exclusive to Sports+ subscribers.There were games on the tube, and Dart tuned in.
It was telling but hardly surprising which matchup he mentioned as one he “loved to watch” with the Giants on their bye. It was the Bengals-Bills, and not because the screen revealed there was a snowstorm in Buffalo. It was Joe Burrow vs.Josh Allen.
Enough said. “There are a lot of quarterbacks around the league who do a lot of really good things and who have been balling this year,” Dart said.“It feels good to watch those guys, kind of see the things that they’re exceptional at, elite at, and try to correlate some of their traits in your own game.” Are there any similarities there? It is not a stretch that some of Dart’s innate charisma — swagger, if you will — has a certain Burrow flair to it.And it is a fact that when the Giants were scouting and studying Dart, former head coach Brian Daboll was taken with Dart in much the same way he was taken with Allen when Daboll was the offensive coordinator and the Bills were evaluating Allen. Dart, at 6-foot-2 and 223 pounds, is big enough, for sure, but he is not a physical specimen in the mold of the 6-foot-5, 237-pound Allen.
There are no issues with Dart’s arm strength, but few can fling it further and with more velocity than the cannon-armed Allen. As a rookie, Allen in 2018 at times had difficulty harnessing his aggressive tendencies, running and failing to protect himself too often.He missed four games with an elbow injury.Likewise, Dart has found it difficult to balance the risk-reward involved with when to take a hit and when to live for another play.
He missed two games with a concussion. “Josh Allen kind of had to be that because he wasn’t as far along as a passer,” a former NFL head coach told The Post.“This kid [Dar...