Jaxson Dart’s propensity to fight for every yard has made it open season on the Giants quarterback.
Tuesday’s “Hard Knocks” showed how the Commanders’ coaching staff prepped its players for last Sunday’s 29-21 road win over Big Blue by telling them to hit Dart since he usually won’t slide, a troubling development due to the concussion concerns that have followed the rookie.
“The last piece, QB, when he’s out here, he is a running back first,” Commanders coach Dan Quinn said while showing his team Dart’s game tape. “This is a good hit by (Patriots linebacker) Christian Elliss on the sideline, alright. He is not looking to go down and get in the slide. We got to go out hitting, fellas.”
There has been much debate about Dart’s style of play in his rookie year since his legs have made him such a valuable asset, yet opened him up to hits that quarterbacks don’t normally take.
Dart usually will try to get every last yard he can get rather than sliding, which opens him up to some bone-crunching hits.
He already missed two games earlier this year due to a concussion, and has visited the medical tent at least five times this year, a rather high number for a player with just 11 games under his belt.
Dart took a particularly vicious hit on Dec. 1 in his return from the aforementioned Elliss on the sideline on a play where perhaps the Patriots linebacker would have pulled up had it not been Dart.
While some questioned whether the play was dirty, Dart’s reputation is he is not going to pull up and defenders now won’t do so either.
In Sunday’s setback at MetLife Stadium, Dart had to briefly leave the game after taking a rough hit on a run in the red zone.
Commanders defensive coordinator Joe Whitt Jr. stressed to his team in a scene shown on “Hard Knocks” how they needed to try to force turnovers from Dart by treating him like a running back.
“The quarterback is a very competitive dual-threat guy, OK,” Whitt said. “He will try to run the ball like a running back. He will try to run you over, he will try to stiff arm, he doesn’t really run out of bounds, he doesn’t slide a whole bunch. We can get the ball off of him.
“The ball is life, it is air and we need it.”
Dart is growing frustrated with all the focus on his style of play, indicating that he believes he’s being singled out at this point.
He did not understand why he had to exit Sunday’s game for a pair of plays to enter the tent before returning to throw a fourth-down incompletion in a 29-14 game.
“Yeah, absolutely,” Dart said of being monitored with extra caution. “You don’t just see people getting taken out of the game like that.
“I definitely feel like there’s a sensitivity for some reason.”
The Giants coaches are trying to toe the line of letting Dart be the dynamic runner he can be while also not potentially limiting his career by letting these hits pile up.
Dart has rushed for 400 yards and seven touchdowns, the fourth-highest rushing total among quarterbacks.
The debate has reached the point that even Giants Super Bowl hero David Tyree told The Post he believes the franchise should consider sitting Dart for the final three games due to the “risks” involved.
“He has to get everything he can and make sure he’s clearly out of bounds so he’s not exposing himself,” Giants offensive coordinator Tim Kelly said recently. “(The Elliss play) was a clean hit. Our guys went to protect him, which you love to see. Obviously, it hurt the team because of the penalty, but if we can do a better job of being able to get out of bounds there, we’re not exposing ourselves to that penalty because we’re not going to get that reaction from the defense.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
