Even in the midst of the Giants’ collapse, this play could be Rookie QB Jaxson Dart’s moment

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Jaxson Dart saw the linebacker. There’s no doubt about that. And he understood the situation too, with the Giants holding a 10-point lead in Denver with 4:56 to go. He may be only 22, but he knew his main job at that point was to stay out of trouble.

Yet he threw the pass anyway on third down and 5, and he didn’t get nearly enough on it to get it over linebacker Justin Strnad. It was a terrible, inexcusable interception, thrown deep in Giants territory, late in the game. Even Dart said, “We were in full control. You can’t do that. That was an unacceptable mistake.”

But as the Giants eye a better future under their newest star, the important part is what happened next. Their rookie quarterback responded not by folding or panicking or forcing bad throws, but by calmly leading a two-minute touchdown drive that should have won the game. Yes, it was aided by two terrible Broncos penalties. But he also completed a remarkable fourth-and-19 pass to Wan’Dale Robinson for a first down.

Just four starts into his NFL career, Dart understood the intensity of the moment and didn’t seem fazed by it at all.

“I think that when you’ve been put in high-pressure moments for a lot of your career since you were a kid, you kind of find those moments enjoyable,” he said. “And at the same time, when I watched the best players in the world when I was a kid, that’s what they were doing. I think it’s just exciting to have the ball in your hands in those situations.”

If the Giants’ defense had held, that would have been Dart’s crowning moment. The fourth-and-19 pass would’ve been hailed as the sign that he’s arrived.

And even though the Giants blew it all and lost the game 33-32, maybe it still was.

“He has a lot of resolve,” receiver Darius Slayton told me on Wednesday. “His ability to flush a past play and move on, it’s really hard to do in this game. It’s easy to linger on things when you do something maybe that [you shouldn’t]. But it shook up pretty good.”

“Yes, he’s relentless,” added defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence. “You can see that play by playing with him. Bad games will happen. It’s all about how you respond. He responded well, and that’s all that matters.”

That’s what matters to the Giants (2-5) right now, even after their loss in Denver. A win would be nice, especially when they head to Philadelphia on Sunday, but Dart’s growth is more important. Even in defeat, there was much to like about his performance. He was put in an impossible situation, in a hostile environment, against a top-five defense, and without two of his best receivers (Malik Nabers and Slayton) and his starting center (John Michael Schmitz).

However, he led the Giants to a 19-0 run through three quarters and a 26-8 lead in the fourth quarter before the collapse began. And he did it while getting hammered by a defense that hit him 10 times, sacked him four times, and shut down his running lanes so well that he ran just five times for 11 yards.

“He had a lot of mental toughness,” Giants coach Brian Daboll said. “He made a lot of good plays for us, gave us a chance to beat one of the best defenses on the road in a hostile environment. Obviously that play was painful, but there are a lot of plays that helped get us to where we were.”

Some of them were made because of Dart, because he changed plays at the line of scrimmage based on what he saw on defense. It happened on a 44-yard touchdown pass in the first quarter, when he not only made a forehand adjustment, but then stepped up in the crumbling pocket, saw the Broncos lost coverage on tight end Daniel Bellinger and hit him for the score.

But it was the fourth-and-19 throw that pleased the Giants more than any other. It came less than four minutes into the game after his ugly interception, after the Broncos had turned a 26-16 deficit into a 30-26 lead. The Giants got the ball back with 1:51 remaining. Dart was sacked and threw two incompletions on the first three plays on that drive.

However, on that fourth and forever, he stepped up when the pocket collapsed and he was thrown to his body as two defenders rushed at him. And he somehow collided with a well-covered Robinson on the first down marker.

A roughing penalty would have given the Giants a first down anyway. But that doesn’t take away from the confidence and toughness he needed in that position to make those kind of throws.

“I mean, if you want to be great, you can’t let things go,” Lawrence said. “You’ve got to get it out of the way and you’ve got to move on. The quicker you do that and the quicker you respond in a positive way, the better for everyone.”

“Of course, it’s definitely one of those things that’s easier said than done, for sure,” Slayton added.

Few Giants quarterbacks have rebounded recently and lived up to those big moments as Dart did on Sunday. Considering the way the last decade has unfolded for this franchise, it’s time they had a quarterback who didn’t crumble under the weight of anything that went wrong.

In some ways, Dart’s debut is a reminder of what it was like when Eli Manning was a great quarterback under pressure. The style isn’t the same – the Dart is more mobile and certainly more cocky on the outside – but the steely demeanor in the face of chaos is certainly the same.

He has shown that he can bring order to that chaos. He has shown that he has the maturity to make good things happen, even when other things go wrong.

“Just flexible,” Bellinger said after the game. “He played with fluidity. In that matchup, you wouldn’t think he was a rookie the way he was acting. He’s a mature guy who’s going to have a lot of success in this league.”

The Giants have seemed certain of that since the day they drafted Dart in April. Even after he took an 18-point lead with six minutes to go, and even after his inexplicable interception in the fourth quarter, the Giants were more confident in him now than ever. Dart’s confidence and arrogance began to become contagious.

He convinced them that he was the man who would always give them a chance to win.

“I had no doubts about whether we would do it [win] “The game. I felt confident with the ball in my hands,” Dart said of Sunday’s game.

It’s clear there’s nowhere else the Giants want him to be.

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

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