The Draw Play

I will never forgive Brian Daboll.

I often see fans of smaller-market teams complaining about not getting enough coverage and respect in the media. It always makes me laugh, because what they think they will get and what they’d actually get if they were a large-market team are two very different things. While larger-market teams certainly get more primetime games, most of the extra media attention isn’t extra respect like they want; it’s just loads of fucking bullshit. The blue medical tent crap surrounding Dart is an excellent case in point.

Dart is being rather singled out regarding the concussion tests and the blue medical tent and the narratives are basically perpetual motion machines at this stage. Most QBs get checked in the tent once in a while, but Dart is the only one you ever hear about. You hear about it because he has an aggressive style of play, and Brian Daboll acted like a child about it after a hit required a checkup last year. So now we have this ridiculous circus every time Dart takes any impact and the doctors/media are feeding into it by dragging him into the tent each time.

Dart is not the only QB who runs and fights for extra yards and takes hits. Cam Newton did it all the time, though this was before the concussion awareness era really began so you could write that off somewhat. But Josh Allen? Allen spent two years acting like a fullback before he learned how to throw the ball. Josh runs into people every game. Josh doesn’t deal with this shit. Nobody goes online and writes “deeply concerned” opinion pieces about how Josh Allen is going to knock himself out of the league in a year because of how he plays. But go online and you’ll see post after post after post about this shit with Dart. It’s wild. Hell Dart gets dragged into the tent more often than Tua does, and Tua should basically live in the tent.

Dart has had exactly one recorded NFL concussion, and it was on a routine play they didn’t even check him on when he took a knee to his head. Yes, it’s possible he had more and the doctors missed it. These are the same NFL doctors who cleared Tua after the most obvious concussion of all time, but it remains only speculation if he’s actually suffered more. You don’t know for sure. I don’t know for sure. We should operate with what data we actually have. What I see is a guy who scrambles, sometimes initiates contact more than necessary, but isn’t throwing himself in front a bus like people are acting.

But thanks to Daboll making a scene, now the discourse is endless. Dart gets checked constantly, each check gets more exposure than anyone else getting checked, and it just feeds into the narrative that he’s throwing himself headfirst into defenders every play when he’s really just experiencing fairly normal QB play for a mobile guy. Daniel Jones scrambled a lot and took hits too, he never got this bullshit about it. Instead we called him Vanilla Vick. Lamar Jackson is called a runningback despite how often he is putting himself at risk. I never see Jalen Hurts Tent Watch when he gets shoved headfirst into a pile of flesh multiple times a game. But Dart, thanks to Daboll, now is THE IDIOT CONCUSSION GUY. It’s exhausting, and it’s going to be an entire season of this flawed narrative, especially when he takes a hit.

The reality is that every QB, nay, every player, should probably be under this level of scrutiny. We need more checks. I have no problem with Dart getting checked after he ended up Yamcha’d on the sack. But why does it seem like he’s the only one getting it like this? We need more focus on safety. We don’t need all of this hyperfocused on one guy with a mostly media-driven reputation for complete recklessness. Jaxson Dart doesn’t seem like the brightest guy, but this is ridiculous and almost every Giants fan I know (who knows ball at least) is deeply tired of this nonsense. I’m not even sold on Dart as our future QB or as a person to root for, but I feel the need to rally around him because of this crap because I do think he’s been saddled with a mostly bullshit narrative that was only partially his fault to begin with.

But this is the kind of bullshit that you have to put up with when your team is a major market. Odell became a polarizing lightning rod despite never doing anything bad as a Giant. He didn’t cause locker room problems until he was a Brown. But he was a very animated guy who liked to celebrate and we got an entire season of net nonsense because the kicking net booped him when he was mad on the sideline. I hope Dart takes better care of himself this season, and I think he will. The question is will anyone outside Giants fans even notice if he does?