Every hit Jaxson Dart took last season seemed to bring another question with it. The blows kept coming, and so did the concern, until five concussion evaluations told a story the New York Giants could no longer ignore. One diagnosis finally confirmed the toll. While the previous regime downplayed the issue, a change in leadership has shifted the response, with new head coach John Harbaugh steering the team in a different direction.

“The first meeting I [Dart] had with quarterbacks coach Brian Callahan and Greg Roman [senior offensive assistant], they sat him down, they went over tape, and they’re basically going over situations where they thought he could have slid,” ESPN’s Jordan Raanan said on The Giants Nation Show. “And they went over the full tape. And so clearly it’s being preached to him behind the scenes, ‘we need you to change… you’ll be a little more selective.’”

Last preseason, going up against the New England Patriots, Dart decided to test himself against defenders instead of sliding to end the play. Then-head coach Brian Daboll described it as Dart getting the “wind knocked out of him, and publicly said he’d like Dart to slide more on certain plays. But the coach also said he’d “never take his competitiveness away.” While he did agree then, the same was repeated later in the season when Dart’s recklessness continued when he became the starter. He got sidelined with a concussion in Week 10 against the Chicago Bears.

By November, the Giants had reportedly asked Dart multiple times to rein it in. He returned from the concussion and immediately risked injury again. On a first-quarter run against the Patriots, he ran up the sideline, refused to step out of bounds, and got sent flying into the bench area. Daboll had already been fired in November after Dart’s concussion, but nothing had really changed, at least for some time.

Eventually, Dart did start to slide more often, making smarter plays instead of big ones. And even Raanan noticed a shift at OTAs last week – in the words Dart chose, not just the actions. The second-year quarterback was approaching the game differently now.

“I think at the end of last year, when he came back from the concussion, you saw a difference in his approach, and clearly resonated with him that he has to treat it a little differently. But his rhetoric has clearly changed,” Raanan said. “And then when I asked him, he said earlier in the week, there’s a time and place for it. He has to be a little more selective was the word he used.”

This offseason under John Harbaugh, Dart is getting significantly more under-center reps, a sharp contrast to last season when he took 369 of his snaps from shotgun and just 42 under center. The physical changes are visible, too.

This is evidence of a quarterback building timing with a new receiving corps instead of extending plays on his legs out of habit. But the question Raanan raised at OTAs is whether any of this translates when the game is on the line in October.

Jaxson Dart still playing his own way?

The Athletic’s Dan Duggan, in his latest mailbag, discussed what Jaxson Dart’s on-field development this year should look like and pointed to something that connects directly to the sliding problem.

“Dart didn’t always seem to read coverages cleanly, which led to some of his crazy scrambles,” Duggan wrote. “Those were great when they worked, but many of the best quarterbacks are ruthlessly boring because they always know where they’re going with the ball and therefore don’t need to walk a high-wire for four quarters every Sunday.”

Duggan wants Dart to manage the game like elite quarterbacks instead of scrambling to make big plays. Interestingly, after last season, Dart had cited Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen as quarterbacks who take hits too – proof, he argued, that his style isn’t an anomaly. But Mahomes doesn’t scramble because he missed the first read. He scrambles when the pocket collapses, and contact is incidental. For Dart last season, it was structural. His own words from the Ross Tucker Podcast in March made the situation plain.

“It’s very situational-based. First or second down, like, alright, let’s be good with our bodies here. Let’s not take anything that’s unnecessary,” Dart said. “In crucial situations, I promise you I’m not going to be the one that slides before that first down line. I’m gonna give it everything I got to get that first down.”

By May, Dart was saying something else. As Raanan noted, Dart has outlined scenarios where he will slide – early downs and early in the game. But for third and fourth downs, where the game hangs in balance, or the end zone is in sight, Dart’s “going to run people over,” according to what he said recently.

While the story last season was a little different, the new coaching staff has already made what they want to see from Dart next season.

“That was, like, one of our first meetings with Coach Callahan, just pulling up my tape and just going over situationally, like, ‘is it worth the risk here in this situation?’” Dart said recently in one of the media interactions. “And that’s what we talk about a ton, is situationally just being smart.”

Jaxson Dart took 35 sacks last season for a loss of 152 yards and absorbed hits on runs he had no business taking. The old staff handed him the liberty to play as he’d always done. John Harbaugh’s team handed him the tape and demanded he do better. Now the question is, will he?