Jaxson Dart waited out Thursday night’s nervous moments at a back table of his NFL Draft party inside a Minky Couture blanket factory in Ogden, Utah.
Seated with Dart as the picks ticked by were former Ole Miss backup quarterback Walker Howard, Rebels offensive lineman Diego Pounds, Ole Miss offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. and Ole Miss assistant coach of quarterbacks Joe Judge.
Dart had invited Judge personally. He wanted him there in Dart’s home state when he found out where he was going to play in the NFL.
As the Giants traded up to select Dart at No. 25 overall in the first round, Judge, the former Giants head coach, said what struck him about the moment was who Dart had decided to spend it with.
“Going to the draft is special,” Judge told the Daily News on the phone Friday morning before flying out of Salt Lake City. “But it was cool that his decision was to be around his friends and family, high school and youth coaches, his college coaches, people from the neighborhood.”
“He celebrated with the people who helped him get there,” Judge added. “It was a mature decision. It wasn’t about being in the spotlight. It was about being around the people he cared about.”
But that is who Dart is, said Judge, who worked closely with Dart during his first-team All-SEC 2024 season. That is why Brian Daboll and the Giants and other teams, including the Saints and Browns and Rams, developed an affinity for Dart the person as well as the player.
‘He’s very sincere, very genuine,” Judge said of Dart. “When he knows you’re investing in him, he invests back. When I first came in [to Ole Miss], it was to observe, consult, help out with gameplans, which evolved to coaching quarterbacks. And getting into the tape, he’s a football junky and absolutely loves it.
“He wants to watch tape,” Judge said of Dart. “He wants to get keys on players and coverages, loves talking through the situations of the game that you’re watching and how to handle it.”
Strong intangibles are a great sign. What made him first-round worthy, of course, were the Giants’ belief in his physical tools and production on the field. And Judge also had a front row seat to Dart’s greatest football strengths.
“As a defensive coordinator, you have to prepare for plays with his legs,” Judge said. “He’s not an ‘abandon the play early guy,’ but he can extend the play. He’s a tough runner and moves very well in the pocket, so he creates extended plays.
“He also has a good deep ball and is very accurate over the shoulder. You have to defend the deep ball against him. He keeps his eyes down the field. And he won’t repeat a lot of mistakes.”
Judge also said Dart is “one of the most instinctive players I’ve ever been around.”
“You can call a play, and he’ll have a wide-open guy that’s opposite of how it was supposed to be,” Judge said, “but he reads it as different and makes a different choice on the field because he knows it’s coming from his film study.”
Judge worked with Dart to help learn several teams’ offenses during the pre-draft process, including the Giants and Browns, and said “every team that met with him loved him.”
Judge already had an affinity for Dart because of the character his quarterback had shown this past season while leading Ole Miss.
He suffered a high ankle sprain on the second play of the game against Georgia, left for one series, returned and finished a 28-10 win on a wet and messy day.
“It wasn’t a small thing,” Judge said. “He just taped it up and kept playing. He earned my respect because he’s legit tough.”
Judge also loved Dart’s compete to the end of Ole Miss’ 52-20 Gator Bowl win over Duke in Dart’s final college game.
Unlike No. 1 overall pick Cam Ward, who sat out the second half of Miami’s Pop-Tarts Bowl loss to Iowa, Dart refused to come out of his last game against the Blue Devils.
“We’re beating Duke by 40 or 50, and we’re trying to take Jax out of the game to give him a walkoff clap, and he’s like, ‘F–k you, I’m not coming out,” Judge said, laughing. “He wouldn’t come out.
“At the two-minute warning, he told the offense to stay in the middle of the field because he wasn’t coming out and he knew we’d try to take him out if he came to the sideline,” Judge continued. “Then [head coach] Lane [Kiffin] is trying to chase him off the field.”
Judge said that is a perfect picture of Dart’s commitment.
“That’s who he is,” he said. “We’re killing this team, but he’s like, ‘I want to play. I want to finish my career here.’ When you look at who this kid is, that’s stuff about him that I love.”
On top of all of that, one of Dart’s most redeeming qualities as a team leader is that he looks inward after failures.
“We had two hard losses to LSU and Florida, and what stood out after both games — because I sat next to him on the plane — is how hard he takes it and how personally he takes it, the feeling of letting people down,” Judge said. “It’s not ‘this person screwed this up’ or ‘oh well.’ It’s, ‘What can I do better? What can I fix? He’s very hard on himself.”
These are all rave reviews of the Giants’ new quarterback from a former Giants head coach who would have every reason not to endorse or show excitement for New York’s next chapter.
But Judge is showing no awkwardness or bitterness about it. If anything, he said he happy for both Dart and the Giants’ fans, because he believes they will be a good match.
“I’m always gonna pull for him,” Judge said of Dart becoming a Giant. “You care about him so much, you want him to succeed and do well. And there’s players on that team I feel the same way about.”
“I’m glad Andrew Thomas and those guys have had success and gotten bigger contracts and want them to have long careers,” he continued. “So anything he can do up there and anyway I can help him, I’m there for him. I do think it’s pretty cool he can play for a cool fanbase.”
Judge said Giants fans “are going to like how he competes, the toughness he plays with, playing through injuries and not wanting to come out of games — things the New York fans that I’ve been around respond to.”
And he said Dart “will be fine” handling the spotlight in the Big Apple.
“It’s important for any player to learn the league and get a support structure around him, which he has,” he said. “He has a great family, coaches in his past and coaches on that [Giants] staff now. And Jaxson’s really mentally tough.”
That’s how Dart handled Thursday night’s buildup at his draft party, too, Judge said: maturely.
In the middle of all the family and friends congregating and supporting Dart in their own way, the Ole Miss crew eventually congregated at that back table and sat together for about an hour from around pick 12 on.
They discussed teams’ strategies and movements and eyed where Dart would ultimately land. Then, New York traded up and the Giants called their new quarterback as he sat inches away from a former Giants head coach. And Judge knew they’d gotten a good one.
“He just handled everything like Jaxson,” Judge said. “Very even keel smile on his face all night. Then all of a sudden when the draft name gets called, things change pretty fast. The phone rings. And he’s up.”
