EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — New York Giants head coach John Harbaugh believes the football should not hit the ground very often during unpadded, non-contact spring practices.
Harbaugh, then, could not have been thrilled with the offensive performance he saw on Monday.
There were a couple of highlight plays. A long, contested-catch touchdown by rookie Malachi Fields, drafted to make those kinds of plays, was encouraging. A red zone touchdown pass from Jaxson Dart to Isaiah Hodgins, who made a contested grab
at the goal line, was pretty. There was a nice deep shot from Jameis Winston to Jalin Hyatt.
In general, though, the passing attack might be described as uninspiring.
Dart threw a bad interception. He broke the pocket to his right and launched a ball for Darnell Mooney down the middle. The ball was late, short, and easily picked off by Paulson Adebo.
Dart also missed several deeper throws, resulting, of course, in the ball landing on the ground. Where Harbaugh says it shouldn’t be very often in these practices.
It is clear that the Giants, with a new head coach in Harbaugh and offensive coordinator in Matt Nagy, are asking Dart to do some different things.
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The second-year quarterback spent a fair amount of time early in Monday’s practice working on dropbacks and play-action fakes from under center.
When Dart broke the pocket, sometimes due to pressure and sometimes due to his own indecision, assistant special teams coach T.J. Weist — at Harbaugh’s direction — was quickly blowing the whistle to end the play.
“You can blame T.J. for that, Coach Weist. I never want that responsibility,” Harbaugh said. “But he probably does blow a pretty quick whistle out there.”
As for what he is seeing from Dart, Harbaugh offered what could be termed a mixed review.
“I think he’s adjusting really well. He looks good. I love his competitiveness. He wants to be perfect every play,” Harbaugh said.
“It’s a work in progress all the time. It’s still fairly early. But the clock is ticking. In the team meeting, we started with “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire. September is right around the corner. So that’s what we’re preparing for.“
Is Dart missing Malik Nabers, Darius Slayton, and even Gunner Olszewski as he gains familiarity with the new group of wide receivers he is surrounded by?
Tight end Isaiah Likely, another of the new targets for Dart, has liked what he has seen from the quarterback.
“You guys see it every day. He’s swaggy. He always has a smile, and he’s always being competitive. Whether he makes a play or misses a play, he’s going to give the next play everything he’s got and try to score every time he has the ball,” Likely said. “Whether he’s running the ball or throwing the ball or really telling everybody where to go, he’s really what you look for in a starting quarterback.”
One good thing coming out of the practices is quality competition between the wide receivers and cornerbacks, two positions where the depth is unsettled, and the fight for roster spots is real.
“The biggest challenge for us as coaches on these kinds of days is to keep them within the framework of what we’re trying to do and not get too physical, right, because these are not live contact practices,” Harbaugh said. “So we try to talk to them all day, and I thought they did a good job, for the most part, of trying to avoid taking it too far. But they’re competitors. They want to do well.
“The wideouts made some catches. The DBs made some plays on the ball. It was good to see. Everybody was flying around.”
