Inside Brian Daboll’s plan to turn Jaxson Dart into a star and save his own career

Ralph Vacchiano

NFL Reporter

When Brian Daboll was hired as offensive coordinator of the Buffalo Bills in 2018, he inherited a raw, erratic, young quarterback and one of the worst offenses in the league. By the time he left, the Bills were an offensive juggernaut and Josh Allen was an All-Pro and MVP runner-up.

That’s the primary reason the New York Giants hired him to be their head coach in 2022. They saw what he did for the Bills and their quarterback and believed he could do the same for them.

So far, they’ve turned out to be wrong.

Now, Daboll has one last chance to show them they were right.

How well the fourth-year Giants coach develops Jaxson Dart is the key to his future in New York, and possibly his future as a head coach anywhere in the NFL. The stakes are really that high after the Giants traded a third-round pick to get back into the first round and draft Dart at No. 25 overall, knowing that co-owner John Mara said finding a franchise quarterback was the “No. 1 issue” of the offseason.

Now that they’ve got him, it’s up to Daboll to develop the Ole Miss star as well as he developed Allen seven years ago, only he has to do it under very different and admittedly “unique” circumstances. The 22-year-old Dart heads into the spring a deep third on the Giants’ depth chart behind two veteran quarterbacks who both expect to play.

That means his time on the field will be limited, even in practice. But Daboll still has to get him ready to start by 2026, at the very least.

“Look, the process of developing a quarterback is just that,” Daboll said. “We’re going to do everything we can to develop him and bring him along.”

No one doubts the Giants’ intentions, but the details of the process are going to matter more. Daboll has been notorious for giving most of his practice reps to his starting quarterback throughout his three seasons with the Giants, and it might be difficult for him to stray from that this year, especially early on. Both of his veterans — 36-year-old Russell Wilson and 31-year-old Jameis Winston — are new to the Giants and Daboll’s system. They’re going to need plenty of practice this spring and summer, too.

That could leave Dart standing and watching in camp a lot more than a rookie quarterback normally would. And while watching Wilson and Winston in action could certainly provide some benefits, at some point Dart will still need time to actually practice what he’s learned.

“Jaxson will get a fair amount of reps with the [third string],” Daboll said. “And maybe you’ll see him in there [with the starters] — sprinkle him in when he doesn’t even know he’s supposed to go in there, just to see how he reacts being in a different atmosphere. He won’t know when or why.”

That, actually, seems to be a big part of Daboll’s plan for developing his future leader. As one team official said, the coach “is like a mad scientist” with quarterbacks. He likes to keep them on edge, constantly thinking, ready for whatever happens next.

That has been evident in Daboll’s pre-draft interactions with quarterbacks, as seen on HBO’s “Hard Knocks” last offseason and in some team-produced videos since the draft. He could be in the middle of a sentence about something else, when he suddenly throws a scenario and question at a quarterback to judge both their knowledge and their ability to quickly react.

With a young player like Dart, that could be an easy way to make sure he stays involved, even when he’s not always in the huddle.

“His expectations coming in is just to improve every day,” Daboll said. “Soak it up like a sponge, learn from the coaches, learn from the veteran quarterbacks in the room, try to improve every day he can in terms of his understanding of the system.”

Giants drafting Dart means Russell Wilson’s leash has shortened

And while no specific plan is in place yet for the preseason, it figures that Dart will at least get an extensive opportunity to show what he’s learned. Both Wilson and Winston will need — and will get — plenty of playing time in exhibitions to get used to their new offense and teammates. But they are veterans who don’t necessarily need to play a lot, and they definitely won’t need to play all three games.

So, Dart figures to see at least a little time in each of the first two. And it’s possible that the third preseason game — Thursday, Aug. 21, at home against the New England Patriots — could almost completely belong to him.

Once the season starts, though, barring an injury to Wilson or Winston, Dart’s reps as the third-string quarterback figure to come mostly on the scout team. That means more classroom work and film sessions than actual playing time for him, which could be a shock to the system for a player who spent the past three years starting for an SEC team.

“I understand coming to the next level, there’s definitely going to be a development piece,” Dart said. “That goes for anybody, regardless of where you’re at in your career, if you’re taking it to the next level.”

Still, while it’s too early again to know an exact plan, a team source expects Daboll to continue his plan to “sprinkle” Dart in to some surprise practice reps during each practice week.

The limitations of practice time, though, mean most of Dart’s learning and growth will come from the sidelines and in the film room. Daboll also plans some extensive, post-practice sessions for Dart with either him, offensive coordinator Mike Kafka, quarterbacks coach Shea Tierney, or all three.

Daboll & Co. know, coming off a 3-14 season in which Mara’s mood was famously sour, that they need to mostly focus on winning games this season. But they also can’t take their eyes off Dart and what he likely means for the franchise starting in 2026.

And he means a lot. It remains a stain on the résumés of both Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen that they were unable to turn Daniel Jones into a viable franchise quarterback. They had a strong belief in him after his promising season in 2022, when he led the Giants to a 9-7-1 record and a win in the playoffs. That’s why they agreed to sign him to a four-year, $160 million contract, only to watch as injuries and poor play derailed Jones’ career.

They’ve spent the past two years searching for a replacement. One year ago, they tried in vain to trade up into the top three of the NFL Draft with their eyes on current Patriots quarterback Drake Maye. Once that attempt failed, they spent the next year on what was basically one, long, extensive scouting trip that ended with their decision to trade up for Dart.

The “unique” part about that move is that they might not really know what they have in Dart until next season. While it’s not completely unusual for a future franchise quarterback to sit most of his rookie year, it is odd for that player to spend his first year as a third-stringer. Both of the Giants’ previous two franchise quarterbacks — Jones and Eli Manning — started out as the primary backups. That’s how Allen began his career in Buffalo, too.

It’s also worth noting that while the Giants went into the rookie seasons for Manning and Jones insisting they’d spend the year watching and learning, it didn’t end up that way. Jones took over for Manning in Week 3 in 2019. Manning took over for veteran Kurt Warner in Week 11 in 2004, even though the Giants were 5-4 and in playoff contention.

Allen, whom Buffalo traded up to select No. 7 overall in 2018, was actually thought to be something of a wild-armed project who would need a lot of time to sit and learn when he joined the Bills. But he took over for then-starter Nathan Peterman early in the third quarter of the season opener and was the Bills’ starter in Week 2.

Dart seems much more likely to sit for most of the season no matter what, given how badly Schoen and Daboll need the Giants to win. But the team source stressed that there’s a belief in the organization that Daboll is flexible enough to move Dart up the depth chart if he thinks he’s ready. The Giants have committed only $10 million and one year to Wilson, and two years, but only $5.25 million guaranteed, to Winston, so they are not worried about their financial investment. They could cut, trade or bench either of them with ease.

So, it’s not impossible that Dart could move past Winston and become the primary backup at some point this season. And if the Giants aren’t in a playoff race in December, they are open to the idea of Dart getting a couple of late starts, just to help him shake off some of his rookie rust and give the organization a better look at what it’s got.

“He’s got the makings of a good quarterback, and there’s a long way to go,” Daboll said. “There’s a developmental process that he’s going to have to go through. Again, these offenses are not easy to learn, and the execution has to be at a high level.”

That’s the big question, though: Can he execute at a high level by the time he needs to, with only limited time to actually do it in practice? Can he become their future starter mostly by watching others? And can Daboll balance what his starter needs, so the Giants can start winning, and still find the kind of on-field time Dart needs to turn into the quarterback he needs to be?

“You’re doing everything you can, (and) again, there’s a long list of things that you have to go through with all these players,” Daboll said. “Quarterback is a particularly hard position mentally. We’re going to put everything we got into it. I know he will too. And there’ll be some struggles and there’ll be some good things, and that’s what you learn from.”

“It’s definitely new,” Dart admitted. “But for me, this is just where my journey starts. I’m stepping into an amazing room with a Super Bowl-winning quarterback who can see it from a different lens at such an elite level. I can’t wait to go learn from him, go learn from all the other guys. And I can’t wait to go out there and compete and do all that I can to make the team better.”

If all goes according to plan, he’ll likely get the chance to do that in 2026. If the Giants’ plan to make a playoff push this season doesn’t materialize — a distinct possibility, given that they’re slated to play the toughest schedule in the league — maybe his chance will come later this year. The less he plays this year, though, the more next year will be like his rookie season — a chance for him to make his rookie mistakes and learn under fire. That could mean another step backwards for the franchise, although it’ll be for the greater good.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that Daboll will still be coaching the Giants — and Dart — in 2026. All Mara has said about the prospects of keeping Daboll and Schoen beyond this season is what he said back in January: “I’m going to have to be in a better mood this time next year than I am right now.”

But looming over all of that is what Mara once said about Jones, on the day Schoen was hired in 2022. He lamented how his young quarterback was about to play for his third head coach, his third offensive coordinator and in his third offensive system in just his fourth year in the NFL — an untenable level of constant change. As he made a vow or a plea for more organizational stability around the quarterback, Mara said, “We’ve done everything possible to screw this kid up since he’s been here.”

He surely doesn’t want to do the same to Dart, which is why, barring a complete disaster of a season, Daboll could be safe for 2026, too — as long as there’s some progress he can point to in his new, young quarterback.

But make no mistake, Daboll’s long-term future in New York is probably tied directly to how much progress Dart shows, and how quickly he shows it. This is his chance to show that the work he did with Allen in Buffalo wasn’t a fluke or simply attributed to Allen’s own talent. It’s his job to show he can take a player he said has “the makings of good quarterback,” and turn him into the long-term starter the Giants have been dreaming about since drafting Jones in 2019.

If he can, Daboll and Dart could be a dynamic duo who spend many happy years together in New York. If he can’t, if Daboll fails with him the way he did with Jones, the Giants will find themselves right back in quarterback hell.

And then it’ll be the job of another coach, and probably another GM, and even another quarterback, to try and pull them back out.

Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He spent the previous six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.

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