Jaxson Dart tore up his knee against the Rams, and the Giants have turned “we need a bridge quarterback” into a six-man audition nobody else wanted to sponsor.
Per Adam Schefter, Dart suffered MCL, PCL, and meniscus damage on a high-low hit, and the meniscus is the real problem behind the knee injury that ended his season, even with his ACL intact. Head coach John Harbaugh has left a sliver of hope for a postseason return, which is coach-speak for don’t hold your breath.
https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/2102789958612475915
Jameis Winston is the starter now. That’s fine for a week. It’s a lot less fine for four to six months, and Winston’s extension was supposed to be insurance, not the plan — the Giants are about to find out exactly how far apart those two things are.
Here’s who’s reportedly on the list Tom Pelissero has been working: Mac Jones, J.J. McCarthy, Justin Fields, Spencer Rattler, Joe Milton, and Jimmy Garoppolo. The Giants’ QB trade targets are a graveyard of other teams’ benches, one guy at a time.
Mac Jones is currently the backup in San Francisco, sitting behind Brock Purdy after the 49ers decided he wasn’t their guy either. J.J. McCarthy got benched by Minnesota for Kyler Murray after roughly one full season as the starter, which has to be some kind of record for how fast a former first-round pick can go from “the guy” to “available.” Spencer Rattler is the backup in New Orleans behind Tyler Shough.
Justin Fields has already bounced from Chicago to Pittsburgh to the Jets to Kansas City and he’s a backup there too. Joe Milton is on Dallas’s practice squad. Jimmy Garoppolo doesn’t have a team at all right now.
Six players, and every single one already got shown the door somewhere else.
According to Heavy.com, league sources believe a trade is a matter of when, not if, and Pelissero says it could come as soon as Monday, right after the Giants play Tennessee.
https://twitter.com/TomPelissero/status/2103834316388098086
A Monday timeline that says panic more than plan. A team with an actual succession plan behind its starter doesn’t need forty-eight hours to figure out who’s next. It already knows.
This isn’t even the first time this year Giants fans have found themselves talking about the training room instead of the roster. Fair or not, this front office keeps landing in the same conversation about the Giants losing control of their own sideline, and a trade this rushed for a player this replaceable doesn’t do much to change that impression.
I’ll give Harbaugh this much: if Winston plays even average football for two months and Mac Jones shows up purely as a clipboard-holder, none of this blows up in anyone’s face. It’s not a five-alarm disaster. It’s just not a plan that should make anyone feel good about the next four months.
My cousin lives a ten-minute walk from MetLife Stadium, and even he texted me last night not to ask about the quarterback search — just to ask if the Giants were doing this on purpose.
I don’t have an answer for him. Neither, apparently, do the Giants.
