Back in December, if the Giants had revealed a list of their Shedeur Sanders scouting touch points compared to their work on Jaxson Dart, no one would have imagined Dart as their NFL Draft target instead of Prime Time’s son.
But Joe Schoen stayed open to the possibility of being convinced otherwise. The Giants GM shifted his preference to Dart this spring as head coach Brian Daboll warmed to Dart as a player and person and Schoen rounded out his own evaluation.
And in the end, Schoen did whatever he could to make sure Dart was a Giant.
New York’s GM is receiving high early marks for a 2025 NFL Draft class that seemingly landed players at good values as far down as Purdue tackle Marcus Mbow in the fifth round.
What Schoen will be remembered for most fondly, however, if Dart turns out to be a franchise quarterback hit, will be the GM’s pivot off of Sanders despite plenty of affinity in the Giants’ building — including his own — for a player that plummeted to the Browns in round five as Cleveland’s second quarterback selected in this draft.
By doing so, Schoen proved he will make what he believes is the best decision for his franchise even if it’s not what he initially had planned, and he leaned all the way back into Daboll as the coach he will be tethered to, for better or worse.
The GM and coach more than ever have been working as separate entities internally coming off a tense end-of-season autopsy, when there were people on the Giants’ personnel side who wouldn’t have minded seeing the coaching staff turned over to reset the clock.
Daboll unquestionably influenced the selection of Dart, however, with the two former Buffalo colleagues required to collaborate on a decision that will define both of their tenures in New York within the next year or two.
The question now is how much time Dart buys them.
It’s entirely possible it will keep Schoen and Daboll here at least two more seasons, until the end of their current five-year contracts, as the Giants develop Dart behind Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston.
Co-owner John Mara’s desperate desire for stability, willingness to accept a 3-14 season and distaste for paying two regimes at once all will factor into that assessment at the end of the upcoming 2025 season.
It’s also never ideal to force a rookie quarterback to learn a second offense in year two under a new GM and coach who did not draft him.
Still, it is going to be difficult for the Giants to win games this fall, unless their free agent signings and rookies dramatically improve the roster’s compete level against the most challenging schedule in the NFL.
So the development and progress of Dart will be a major if not deciding factor in that judgment at season’s end.
Remember: Quarterbacks who are drafted in the first round almost always start games as rookies, and they typically enter the lineup sooner than expected — especially when the team’s playoff hopes are out of reach.
Daboll already hit the Vegas betting line under on how long it would take him to use Josh Allen’s name when discussing Dart.
The Giants’ coach said he’s working through Dart’s spring practice plan and added: “We kind of did that a little bit at Buffalo with Josh in terms of the initial plan of how we wanted to approach it and the reps that we needed to take and the things we wanted to see him do.
“Jaxson will get a fair amount of reps with the threes,” Daboll continued. “And maybe you’ll see him in there [with other units], sprinkle him in when he doesn’t even know he’s supposed to go in there just to see how he reacts being in a different atmosphere. He won’t know when or why.”
The Giants’ coach also noted that Dart is “not going to be too far behind” veterans Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston in “learning our system” because Wilson and Winston have “only had four meetings” so far in the building.
Invoking Allen’s name is yet another reminder that Dart could see the field early.
Granted, Buffalo picked Allen No. 7 overall in 2018, higher than Dart at No. 25. But Allen saw the field immediately, replacing Nathan Peterman in the second half of a 47-3 Week 1 blowout loss to the Baltimore Ravens and Wink Martindale’s defense.
Whenever Dart does play, the fates of Schoen and Daboll will come into clearer focus.
There is no doubt that Schoen is continuing to build a case for the strength of his roster to be considered separately from the on-field results, just as he did last year.
He acknowledged on Saturday, for example, that he likes how the team looks “on paper” but added: “Until we go out and do it, it doesn’t matter.”
“It’s just on paper now,” Schoen said of a seemingly strong defensive front, a view he reiterated on his roster as a whole. “That’s where this time of year [Daboll] is doing a great job, and the coaches and the players themselves. They need to come together and develop their own identity and what type of team they want to be.
“Until we go out and do it, it’s just on paper,” he continued. “I’m excited to see how this team comes together. I like the players that we have. I like the makeup of the players. I’m confident in the coaching staff, and I’m excited for the 2025 season.”
Dart’s success or failure, though, will be both Schoen’s and Daboll’s success or failure.
This is their second major decision on a franchise quarterback. Signing Daniel Jones to a four-year, $160 million contract extension failed.
This one needs to hit. And that will be judged when Dart takes the field.
That’s what makes Schoen’s pivot off Sanders to Dart so noteworthy: He navigated a messy dynamic and kept his mind open to a different quarterback than the one he’d zeroed in on throughout the fall.
Then he traded up for Dart — under clear pressure to pick a QB, despite what he said publicly — because the GM decided Dart was best for the team.
Granted, the rest of the NFL rejected Sanders as a prospect, too. So there were 32 other general managers who reached the same conclusion about Sanders that Schoen did until Browns owner Jimmy Haslam seemingly jumped in.
Still, Schoen doesn’t work for any of those organizations. He works for the Giants, who had people in their building only hours prior to Thursday night’s first round who still considered Sanders a possibility if another team beat them up the board for Dart.
Yet Schoen went and got Dart, aligning with Daboll’s preference, despite all of those trips to games and practices in Boulder, Colo.
If Schoen is remembered for anything in this NFL Draft, for better or worse, it will be that.
