The New York Giants are running the 2026 season without their main man in the driver’s seat. They are without quarterback Jaxson Dart who has been out with a knee injury. The young QB is in a tough spot at the moment, but he’s been receiveing some wise words from Giants icon Eli Manning
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“I haven’t spoken to him on the phone. You know, just been training, some text messages back and forth the last few weeks,” said Manning on The Saturday Huddle with Gary Myers. “It seems unfortunate. He was devastated by it, hated it. I think he felt very excited about the season and had worked hard to do everything. So, you know, it just stinks.
“I just say stay around,” Manning said. “You’re still a leader of this team. You’re still involved. I think you want to continue to learn. You’re still a young quarterback. You still need to be in these meeting rooms. You still need to be in the game planning rooms. You got to be around the other quarterbacks and still be a part of this. If you kind of disappear from that part, it could truly be a wasted year.
“Don’t make this a wasted year because of injury. You can still learn, continue to see what they’re doing, be a resource for Jameis [Winston], watch some film for him, do those things, and be helpful and be around and continue to grow and learn this system.”
Manning brought plenty of experience to the advice, having won two Super Bowl MVPs and being one of the best quarterbacks the league has ever seen.
Dart was impressive for a rookie who was thrust into the fire midway through the season last year, after the Giants benched Russell Wilson. Those are big shoes to step into. He won only four of the games he started, but he finished with 2,272 yards and 15 touchdowns against only five interceptions. Dart had done enough to prove himself as the Giants’ QB1, and potentially a franchise star down the line.
He was off to a great start in 2026, having thrown for 230 yards and three touchdowns against the Dallas Cowboys. But now that his season has ended extremely prematurely, it is bound to hurt him and the team. The Giants have had to scramble for a quarterback and traded for J.J. McCarthy from the Minnesota Vikings.
Meanwhile, in his absence, the locker room is rallying behind their QB.
“[He] has his brothers with him, he has family, he has people that care about him, and there are people (that are) going to be with him through this rehab,” wide receiver Malik Nabers, who also missed significant time last season due to an injury, said. “We’re going to support him and get him back on the field as healthy as possible.”
For now, we know that Dart’s surgery went well.
“I think it went well. Have you ever heard the doctor tell you it didn’t go well?” head coach John Harbaugh said. “I think it was as expected. I think they saw what they thought they were going to see and just fixed it. The timeline doesn’t really change too much.”
The earliest Dart could potentially return based on a four-month recovery timeline is December 25, which falls five days before the Giants take on the Detroit Lions in Week 16. However, it is expected that he will not take the field by then. Should the Giants make the postseason, there could be a way.
Harbaugh, however, feels “that’s a little ambitious” for the quarterback to hit the gridiron in the postseason.
No matter what, as advised by Manning, Dart has some responsibilities even if he is not fit enough to play.