The New York Giants have two injury-prone former first-round picks on their roster who could both become their future franchise quarterback: J.J. McCarthy and Jaxson Dart.
Dart has done little to prove he’s that guy. He had an up-and-down rookie year and seemed not to understand the value of avoiding big hits then suffered a season-ending knee injury in Week 2 of the 2026 regular season.
McCarthy, who joined the Giants in a throwaway trade with the Minnesota Vikings last month, has strung together two legitimately good performances in a row.
In Week 6, Giants head coach John Harbaugh brought McCarthy off the bench with his team down 34-10 to the New Orleans Saints with 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter — a game that ended with the Giants getting a chance to tie on the final play of the game in a 34-27 loss.
In Week 7, McCarthy looked great again in a gutsy 27-21 road win over the Houston Texans, going 20-of-27 for 252 yards and no turnovers.
So … anybody see what the problem is here?
‘Real Issue’ on Horizon for Giants at QB Position
The Ringer’s Bill Simmons pointed out the obvious for the Giants after the win over the Texans improved them to 4-2-1 and kept them in first place in the NFC East.
McCarthy and the Giants were also 10-point underdogs against the Texans.
“The Giants are going to have a real issue if McCarthy looks like he did today for the rest of the season with the Jaxson Dart piece of this,” Simmons said on Sunday night. “Because that’s exactly the kind of quarterback a Harbaugh team needs. That was Michigan McCarthy. That’s everything we heard about the guy before the draft … J.J. McCarthy was legitimately good. I don’t understand how this didn’t work in Minnesota.”
Financially, for the quarterback position, the Giants are paying less than $1 million for McCarthy to be on the field in 2026 — his cap hit after the trade is a mere $836,108 after the trade and only bumps up to a meager $3.775 million for 2027, when he’s in the final season of his 4-year, $21.8 million rookie contract.
Dart will be in the 3rd season of his 4-year, $16.9 million rookie contract in 2027 and will only be due $2.3 million. Financially, with their quarterbacks, it means the Giants have never been in a better place.
ESPN: McCarthy Can Lead Giants to Playoffs
ESPN’s Dan Graziano went on the record after the win over the Texans saying that he thinks the Giants could very well make a run to the playoffs with McCarthy at the helm.
“The Giants are playing very good team football right now,” Graziano wrote. “Given what we saw in Minnesota, McCarthy is a tough guy to count on. But he’s also talented enough to have been picked 10th in the 2024 NFL draft, and it’s entirely possible that what he needed was a new situation. There is a world where he flops completely. There is a world where he’s inconsistent the rest of the way and the Giants don’t have enough around him to cash in. But there’s also absolutely a world in which he and they play just well enough to win a bad NFC East. Right now, the math tells us that it’s absolutely possible, and the Giants are the betting favorite to win their division.”
Giants Facing ‘Real Issue’ Between J.J. McCarthy & Jaxson Dart