Jaxson Dart is likely not going to be under center for any of them, but the New York Giants still have 15 games to play in the 2026 NFL season. How will they do without their young quarterback, who played like a star in an impressive Week 1 victory over the Dallas Cowboys?
We begin to find out Sunday at MetLife Stadium when the Tennessee Dabolls — er, Titans — come to East Rutherford, N.J. for a 1 p.m. matchup. Below are some of the storylines for the week.
Winning without Dart
The latest reporting from NFL Network insider
Mike Garafolo is that “there are a few timelines on the table, none of them very good, one of them season-ending” for the Giants quarterback.
While we await word on that, it is obvious Dart will not play Sunday against Tennessee. And the Giants will be without him for the foreseeable future.
How will the Giants fare without Dart, especially if he is out all season? It is possible that John Harbaugh and his veteran coaching staff squeeze every ounce of juice from this imperfect Giants’ roster and they finish in the neighborhood of .500. It is also possible that a four- or five-win season, the kind of disastrous year the Giants figured was off the table due to Harbaugh’s presence, is back on the table.
Beginning with the 0-2 Titans, the Giants have a three-game stretch of games that should be winnable.
Tennessee is a young, winless team coming to MetLife Stadium. They did, though, put a Week 2 scare into the Philadelphia Eagles. The 1-1 Arizona Cardinals come to MetLife in Week 4. They are expected to be one of the league’s weaker teams. The Giants visit the 0-2 Washington Commanders in Week 5. The Commanders could be without star quarterback Jayden Daniels, who suffered his second dislocated left elbow in as many seasons on Sunday against the Dallas Cowboys.
If the Giants cannot win at least two of those three games, another long, miserable, losing season could follow.
Harbaugh, one of the winningest head coaches of all time, is going to be challenged over the next 15 games.
The veteran head coach promised on Tuesday that the Giants will “be fighting every step of the way.”
“We haven’t even come close – not even close — to playing as well as we’re capable of playing as a football team,” Harbaugh said. “So, that’s really going to be the focus. I mean, it’s going to be something we’re going to have to, you deal with all the different challenges that you face and all the different adversity that you face, for sure. And even the prosperity, you learned that last week, you faced some of the prosperity, and prosperity sometimes can be more dangerous than adversity.
“All these challenges to put your best effort out there, play your best football, so you can win a football game. And we’re going to do that. These guys are going to do that. That’s what you get excited about. The prospect of our team playing the best football that they can play. And that’s what we’re working on, working as hard as we can, working like crazy as a football team to do that all together.”
The Giants referred to Dart’s injury as an in-game “gut punch.” Harbaugh does not expect that to cause a long-term letdown.
“The guys want to go win. They want to go play,” Harbaugh said. “Guys play. They’ll play. They play for each other. They play for themselves. They play for their families. They play because they believe they can win the game. And it’s never one person, never one person that wins or loses a football game. It’s everybody. And the more good players you can have out there, the better chance you’re going to have. There’s no doubt about it. But you still have to be a complete team to win games.
“If you get punched in the gut, are you going down? Are you going down? Are you going to crumple to the ground, as Jack Harbaugh would say, like a sack of sour apples and just fall to the ground and just rot away and wither away into the dust. Is that what you’re going to do?”
To win games, the Giants are going to have to accomplish several things:
- They will have to get better play from quarterback Jameis Winston than the miserable 11 of 27 for 11 yards and an interception performance he gave them Monday night.
- They will have to find some way to get explosive plays from their offense. The longest non-Dart run they have in two games is a 13-yard carry by Cam Skattebo. They have one pass completion of more than 20 yards, a 33-yard grab by Darnell Mooney.
- The pass rush will have to remember that the regular season has started.
- They will need to find a way to cover some of the league’s best receivers.
- They need to hope that injuries to stars Brian Burns, Andrew Thomas, and Malik Nabers aren’t severe. Oh, and that other injuries don’t continue to pile up.
We begin to find out how life after Dart will go Sunday against Tennessee.
More injuries to worry about
Dart suffered the worst and most significant injury on Monday night. Still, the game against the Rams saw several other significant injuries to Giants stars.
- Edge defender Brian Burns, who had a career-high 16.5 sacks last season, suffered a sprained left ankle.
- Left tackle Andrew Thomas apparently suffered a groin injury on the Giants’ final offensive possession.
- Wide receiver Malik Nabers left the game briefly with a shoulder injury. He had just one catch for 1 yard in the game.
- Cornerback Deonte Banks missed Monday’s game with a calf injury. His status for Week 3 is unclear.
The initial injury report of the week comes out Wednesday afternoon. We find out more about the severity of these injuries then. With a short week before playing the Titans, it is fair to wonder just how short-handed the Giants are going to be in a game that not long ago looked like one the Giants should win.
Remember the Titans
This game has been circled on the calendar for a while simply because of the volume of former Giants — especially key Giants — who are now part of the Titans’ organization.
- Daboll, fired last season as Giants head coach, is now running the Tennessee offense. Daboll, of course, was instrumental in the Giants’ decision to trade up last season to draft Dart.
- Robinson is second on the Titans with six receptions for 47 yards, just 7.8 yards per catch. He had the only 1,000-yard season of his career with the Giants last season.
- Bellinger has just one catch in two games, one of which he started.
- Schlottmann has started both Tennessee games at center. Through two games, Schlottmann’s Pro Football and Sports Network ‘Impact Score’ is 72.6. For the Giants, starting center John Michael Schmitz is at 73.6. Both scores are slightly below what PFSN considers league average, a score of 75.0.
Where’s the pass rush?
The Giants’ defense was supposed to be built around what they hoped would be a dominant pass rush.
Burns is coming off a career-best season. Abdul Carter was drafted No. 3 overall in hopes he would be a game-wrecking pass rusher. He looked in the summer like he was about to fulfill that promise. Kayvon Thibodeaux has at times been a good, but not great, pass rusher. No. 5 overall pick Arvell Reese is an inside linebacker with pass rush potential. Interior defensive linemen Chauncey Golston and Darius Alexander have pass rush ability. Defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson’s defense used creative schemes to pressure Giants’ quarterbacks throughout training camp.
Through two weeks of the regular season, none of that talent, potential, and summer promise has mattered. The pass rush has been non-existent.
- The Giants have one quarterback sack. Per NextGenStats, their 1.4% sack rate is 31st in the league. Only the woeful Miami Dolphins, who do not have a sack yet, are worse.
- The Giants’ pressure rate of 26.1, again per NGS, is the worst in the league. The ball is coming out quickly against New York, with the 2.69-second time to throw against the Giants 26th overall. That is .41 seconds faster than league average. Still, the pressure rate isn’t good enough.
- Against the Rams, the Giants’ pressure rate was even worse:
- The “Get-Off” time for Giants defensive linemen — the time is takes for them to cross the line of scrimmage — is worst in the league at .94 seconds. If the ball is coming out quickly, and your linemen are getting off the ball slowly, that is a bad combination.
- The Giants are giving up +.41 Expected Points Added (EPA) per pass play. Only the Dolphins are worse.
We knew entering the season that the Giants’ pass rush was going to have to cover for a questionable secondary. So far, it has not not.
That needs to change. Quickly.
