Giants Rookie Duo Has Brought This One Big Element to Team's Offense

"Look at how different the play calling was," Barber said on his show Tuesday about Dart's specific influence on the Giants' offense.

"It was so many different variations of things that they do--inside zone, zone reads, all that stuff--except that it felt so dynamic and so winnable."

"Then you have a dog at quarterback...this kid will not take no for an answer, and it reminds me of the same conversation about Cam Skattebo, who uses his physicality to inspire his teammates."

Barber recalled one possession in particular during the fourth quarter of the Giants' Week 4 win where Dart took the snap and was determined to push it upfield with his legs to secure the first down and keep an important drive moving closer to the endzone for the game-sealing score.

The play was on 3rd-and-1 from the Chargers' 10-yard line when the rookie gunslinger tried scampering to the right side to reach for the huge conversion and ended up being met at the line of scrimmage by a wall of defenders.

The Chargers' initial resistance wouldn't bother Dart, who found a way to bounce off it and extend the play more to the outside than get to the first-down marker, albeit with the help of a timely offsides penalty on Los Angeles that had been spotted before the snap.

While the huge play by Dart didn't matter at the end of the drive as the Giants soon turned the ball over on downs just three yards shy of the endzone, it was the total display of confidence and aggressiveness by a fresh face that seemed to raise the bar for the rest of the roster throughout the ball game.

Especially for the Giants' defense, which matched their rookie quarterback's effort with their own dominant pass-rushing affair led by the four talented players up front.

The Giants recorded 20 total pressures, including two sacks, and were able to throw Justin Herbert off his intended reads at a 47.7% clip, while limiting him to 2.63 seconds to throw.

To Barber, that was as critical as the playmaking that the Giants made on the field Sunday. They went against the grain of what typically happens when a veteran signal caller gets benched for a budding prospect and rallies around Dart in word and action, leading to the awe-inspiring result that took place.

"What happened was the defense was playing with a ridiculous lights-out energy and all three guys were getting after the quarterback, and on offense they're playing with the same energy because of Cam Skattebo and Jaxson Dart."

As many were ready to write off the Giants' 2025 season and prepare the obituary statements for Brian Daboll's head coaching tenure, it was the perfect scenario of how impactful a change of scenery, or in the Giants' case, a change of the player under center, can be for the direction an organization's fate goes.

One must remain a bit reserved until we see that Dart continues to guide the offense and inspire the rest of the team to strive for more wins and alter the ultimate narrative of what this season was meant to be about.

For now, many are enthused about what the young arm brought to the table in his first appearance on a big stage in New York, where history has shown it is very difficult to stick around and become a beloved hero to the vocal fans in the stands who demand excellence week in and week out.

Nobody is going to crown Dart as the next Eli Manning in development. Still, there is one current name that Barber feels should resonate in Giants fans' minds as they continue to watch Dart and hope that his professional career takes the same upward trajectory as this person's has.

"(Dart) reminds me of a more physically talented Baker Mayfield," Barber said.

"He has an attitude, he wants to talk trash to you, and he wants to lift his teammates by being the aggressor all the time. To me, that's exactly how Jaxson Dart plays."