How Giants' Jaxson Dart may need to change playing style to avoid future injury concerns

Earlier this month, second-year New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart acknowledged that his coaches want him to have a better understanding of when trying to make a play with his legs isn't worth the injury risk associated with such a decision. 

For a mailbag published on Friday morning, Giants reporter Dan Duggan of The Athletic shared how Dart can "play quarterback conventionally better and more consistently" to stay in the lineup for a full 17-game season. 

Jaxson Dart was his own worst enemy during portions of his rookie season

"Pro Football Focus credited 39.1 percent of Dart’s pressures to the quarterback," Duggan wrote about the signal-caller's rookie season. "The next highest rate was Lamar Jackson at 27.3 percent. If Dart can get into that range with Jackson and other scrambling quarterbacks, he should be fine. That will mean recognizing that there isn’t a big play available on every snap, and that sometimes a 2-yard completion on first down is acceptable."

While Jackson is a two-time regular-season Most Valuable Player, he is also coming off a down season and has dealt with numerous injuries since he first entered the league in 2018. Most recently, he was limited to 13 starts last season due to physical setbacks. 

As for Dart, he was forced out of games on five occasions to get checked for a concussion from the 2025 preseason through Week 18. He was ultimately sidelined for a pair of November games while he was in the concussion protocol. 

Can Jaxson Dart become "ruthlessly boring?"

During the Giants' Town Hall in May, Dart somewhat defiantly vowed that he would still be willing to "go right through" opposing players in certain instances of games. That's all well and good on a fourth-down play, but it sounds like the new Giants coaching staff wants Dart to limit the number of times such an instance arises. 

"Dart didn’t always seem to read coverages cleanly," Duggan continued, "which led to some of his crazy scrambles. Those were great when they worked, but many of the best quarterbacks are ruthlessly boring because they always know where they’re going with the ball and therefore don’t need to walk a high-wire for four quarters every Sunday."

One theory about Jackson's well-known playoff struggles is that he never made a Super Bowl appearance under head coach John Harbaugh because "taking a beating over the course of the year" routinely took a toll on Jackson's body. Harbaugh is now the Giants' head coach and may want better for Dart than what Jackson has thus far experienced during his postseason journeys.