FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Jaxson Dart’s Monday night return to the Giants‘ starting lineup was a refreshing sight, but it was also bittersweet, because that meant New York’s Jameis Winston Experience likely has come to an end.
Winston’s two weeks as the Giants starting quarterback were a different kind of excitement from the hope for the future that Dart has offered with his dual threat production and swagger during this otherwise miserable season.
But the juice that Winston gave the team and the impact his performance in Detroit had on the NFL at large was a reminder of what leadership, entertainment and elite talent look like in the NFL.
It was a crime, really, to watch the rest of this week’s NFL games and realize how many teams would have been better off with Winston at quarterback instead of their current starter — while Winston toiled the entire first of this half season as a healthy inactive with the lowly Giants.
The Minnesota Vikings, Miami Dolphins, New Orleans Saints, Pittsburgh Steelers and Tennessee Titans all would have been better off with Winston playing for them on Sunday. Plenty other teams would have produced similar results in Week 13 if they’d subbed their QB out for him.
For the Giants, meanwhile, Winston’s high level of play in Weeks 11 and 12 again calls into question how on earth Joe Schoen and the Giants chose Russell Wilson over Winston to be the Week 1 starting quarterback for this team while Dart developed as the early backup.
There is no disputing after watching Wilson’s performance and impact on the team from Weeks 1 through 3 — and Winston’s subsequent production and energy in his two starts the last couple weeks — that the 2025 Giants would have been better off if Winston had been the regular season starter from the jump.
The Giants did not score a touchdown in their 21-6 season-opening loss at Washington with Wilson at quarterback. Is there anyone in the United States who believes Winston would not have found the end zone in that game if he had started for New York?
The problem wasn’t just that the Giants chose Wilson over Winston. The problem was they didn’t even let him compete for the job in the first place.
The team believed that naming Wilson the starter from day one could turn him into the locker room’s North Star as a former Super Bowl champion with some cache.
The Giants needed someone or something to fill the void in locker room leadership left by Schoen’s mismanagement of the roster that included the departures of revered personalities and teammates such as Leonard Williams, Julian Love, Xavier McKinney and Saquon Barkley.
The team signed Winston before Wilson in March to create an insurance policy in case they didn’t land a quarterback in the draft. Once they drafted Dart, though, the Giants made clear that Wilson was their choice to lead them.
They had paid Wilson more money than they’d paid Winston, and they felt more secure with a higher floor with Wilson as the quarterback because Winston was too turnover prone.
So even when Winston looked like the more explosive QB in practices during training camp, the Giants never gave him consideration. His snap count in camp was closer to Tommy DeVito’s than it was to Wilson’s or Dart’s.
Wilson’s overtime interception in Week 2 in Dallas, however, undercut his lone productive game in three starts. And it was a startling indictment of the Giants’ process in steering away entirely from Winston.
Then, when Winston capably and responsibly and productively replaced the injured Dart in his past two games as starter, it was a reminder that the Giants’ ability to evaluate talent and a player’s impact on a locker room is not to be trusted. The entire locker room responded to Winston, and so did the rest of the league.
That ‘Bullseye’ trick play in Detroit — when wide receiver Gunner Olszewski threw a 33-yard touchdown pass to a galloping Winston — was the most exciting play made by a Giant in recent memory. And it might go down as the top play in the NFL all season.
It will at least be a finalist alongside the trio of incredible catches made on Sunday by the Rams’ Puka Nacua, the Raiders’ Brock Bowers and the Commanders’ Treylon Burks.
The absence of joy around the Giants franchise these days, which has been primarily due to their lack of wins, might have been expunged if Winston had been able to put more of a stamp on this season.
Instead, Shane and Daboll dragged this team‘s fortunes down into the gutter by starting Wilson in Weeks 1 through 3 while the Giants slid to an 0-3 start and Winston patiently waited in the background.
This is a highly unusual scenario for a player. Usually, a quarterback with this much utility finds his way into a situation where he eventually gets a series of opportunities.
That’s exactly what Winston did when he played with the New Orleans Saints and with the Cleveland Browns after his time as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers No. 1 overall pick in 2015 ran its course.
But this year, he was awkwardly sandwiched onto this roster by a front office and coaching staff that could not attract their top available options to New York, so they settled for a duo of Wilson and Winston. Then, they chose the wrong one to lead the team into the season.
It’s a shame Winston isn’t going to start for some other team for the rest of this season, because he clearly has the ability to play high-level football and to give whatever team he is representing a chance to win that day.
It’s never going to be perfect with Winston, but it sure will be memorable and fun. The Giants didn’t know what they had until it was too late.
The one silver lining for the next four games, at least, is that if Dart ever needs another breather, Winston remains the active number two.
So there is still a chance that the Jameis Winston Experience of 2025 is not complete.