a coach with whom he had exchanged \u201cI love you\u2019s\u201d<\/a> when the Giants drafted him.<\/p>\n\u201cWhen I look back on everything, it\u2019s really special to come to a place where a coach genuinely cares about you and loves you and you have that personal relationship on and off the field,\u201d Dart said. \u201cI just have all the respect in the world for him [Daboll]. I think he\u2019s an incredible offensive mind. He\u2019s done an amazing job developing me up to this point.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis business is a beast, man, and give a shoutout to Coach Shane (Bowen) as well. Unfortunately, we just weren\u2019t able to get enough wins for them. But at the same time, got a lot of respect for them, and Coach Dabs, who knows if I\u2019m here without him, so I\u2019ve got all the respect and love for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dart said \u201cit sucked\u201d to see Daboll be fired, especially while Dart was in the NFL\u2019s concussion protocol.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a lot of love for Coach Dabs and we\u2019re really close, so to kind of see it go down that way, especially my rookie year, it was hard,\u201d Dart said. \u201cSo, just trying to control what I can control, take the next steps, but just wish we could have done more as players to get more wins for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daboll is gone, though. Now it is incumbent upon the Giants to get the hire of the next coach correct so they don\u2019t put Dart through the constant turmoil Daniel Jones experienced in six mostly unsuccessful years as the Giants quarterback.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got to be more available\u201d<\/p>\n
Dart has seven rushing touchdowns and has proven his willingness to take \u2014 and dish out \u2014 punishment. He has consistently received a message from the organization about being smart and protecting himself when he can. From what Dart said on Friday, perhaps that has begun to sink in.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I watched the whole [Bears] game – and it\u2019s kind of been a point of emphasis going into each game of just being smarter with the hits that I take,\u201d Dart said. \u201cWhen I look back at the game, there\u2019s not a hit where I\u2019m like, dang, I shouldn\u2019t have taken that hit, to be honest. I felt like I was making smart decisions. I didn\u2019t take really any unnecessary hits. That was just a situation where you kind of lose control of your body when you fumble it and you\u2019re not really bracing for the ground. But obviously, moving forward, now I\u2019ve got to be more available for this team, so, that\u2019s obviously on the forefront of my mind going forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m still getting used to this game. I\u2019m getting used to the speed of this level. In college, you can watch my tape, I very rarely slid. But this is a different beast. So, for me, I\u2019ve got to be obviously a little bit more responsible when I\u2019m in the open field. But I felt like, quite honestly, I was getting better at it each and every week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Waiting to be cleared wasn\u2019t easy for Dart<\/p>\n
The rookie quarterback was on the practiced field before the Week 11 game against the Green Bay Packers. He practiced on a limited basis the entire week before last Sunday\u2019s game against the Detroit Lions. He wasn\u2019t released from the concussion protocol, though, until Thanksgiving Day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I can go and I felt like I can go the week before too. But obviously there are protocols and there are different tests that you have to pass,\u201d Dart said. \u201cOur medical team does a really good job of making sure that we meet all those requirements to be out there on the field. But it\u2019s been hard, man. I can\u2019t stand sitting on the sideline watching. But credit to those guys. Maybe in the moment I wasn\u2019t the happiest, but they\u2019re overlooking our health and our safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely not fun to feel like you have no control over the outcome of the game, but you just try to be the best teammate that you can.\u201d<\/p>\n
The difference between winning and losing in the NFL<\/p>\n
The 2-10 Giants have lost five times this season when they held a two-score lead at some point during a game. The narrow margin in the NFL between victory and defeat has been a bitter lesson for Dart.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe season so far has been tough because our record could completely be flipped the other way and everybody here is in a completely different state of mind,\u201d Dart said. \u201cBut I\u2019ve just come to realize that in the NFL, if you don\u2019t make those crunch-time moment plays and the other team does, you\u2019re going to lose, and it doesn\u2019t really matter how well you play up until the end of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, at times, it honestly doesn\u2019t even feel real because you feel like you\u2019re in control of the entire game and somehow things just don\u2019t work. That\u2019s just the beauty of the sport is it could go one way, it could go the other way and when you\u2019re playing at this level of competition, especially for me, I\u2019ve come to realize that it doesn\u2019t matter how you play at all until, who scores last, who has the ball last and who makes that last crucial play at the end of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Much has changed for the New York Giants since rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart last spoke to the media…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[100764,3267,99],"class_list":["post-319795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-york-giants-transcripts","tag-new-york-giants-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}