New York Giants fans are reeling on Wednesday, as quarterback Jaxson Dart's season has been officially ended after needing surgery to repair multiple ligaments in his left knee after a brutal hit in Monday night's loss to the Los Angeles Rams.
While fans think about what the rest of the 2026 season will look like, OutKick host Craig Carton believes that it is "effectively and tangibly" at an end before their Week 3 contest against the Tennessee Titans, but he wanted to bring up a different issue when analyzing this all.
Carton believes the Giants hate their fan base - and Dart's injury is proof of that in his eyes.
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"The Giants hate you because they're protecting information like it's, I don't know, what's a good comparison? They're protecting information like it's McCarthyism back in the day. That's a leap, I know it's a leap. But follow the bouncing ball. "
The bouncing ball for Carton begins with what ESPN's Laura Rutledge reported during the "Monday Night Football" broadcast, where the Rams defeated the Giants, 28-6, following Dart's injury just seven plays into the game. Rutledge spoke with Giants GM Joe Schoen, who noted that Dart would be fine.
That obviously wasn't the case.
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"The Giants hate you because they're protecting information like it's, I don't know, what's a good comparison? They're protecting information like it's McCarthyism back in the day. That's a leap, I know it's a leap. But follow the bouncing ball. "
The bouncing ball for Carton begins with what ESPN's Laura Rutledge reported during the "Monday Night Football" broadcast, where the Rams defeated the Giants, 28-6, following Dart's injury just seven plays into the game. Rutledge spoke with Giants GM Joe Schoen, who noted that Dart would be fine.
"Joe Schoen, the general manager of the New York Giants, essentially tells a national football audience that he's fine. Jaxson Dart is fine. He might not come into this game, but the injury is nothing for Giants fans to be worried about," Carton said. "OK, great. Fast forward, we hear after the game, we're thinking three-to-five weeks, maybe four-to-six weeks, and that it's a sprain of the MCL. That's good news. That means that Jaxson didn't tear the ACL, there's no meniscus tear, and it's a injury he can come back from and still play football this year. Then, we look at the Giants' schedule and theoretically, the next couple of weeks not that bad.
"But here's the hubris of this particular Giants regime and it's led by the capo himself, and that is Johnny Harbaugh. This is not a Mara thing. I don't even think it's a Schoen thing as incompetent as Joe Schoen is and as wrong as he was about the injury update during the broadcast, and man oh man, he could not have been more wrong. He screwed the pooch on that one."
When Giants fans, and the rest of football fans, found out that Dart's injury was actually much more serious, Giants head coach John Harbaugh had just addressed the situation during his Tuesday press conference. He said he wanted to wait on further evaluations and wasn't clear about what Dart was dealing with.
Remember, this came after the initial belief that Dart would miss time with an MCL sprain, but it wouldn't be for the entire season.
Then, after Harbaugh's press conference, NFL insiders began reporting that Dart is facing a much more serious injury and that losing him for the season was on the table.
"John Harbaugh decided that you, as a long-suffering Giants fan, the people that pay $100 to park at MetLife Stadium, the people that drop thousands and thousands of dollars on tickets and on the product, which has sucked, for the last decade, he decides to play Stalin with you. He decides you don't deserve information," Carton added. "That's a slap in the face to Giants fans when the report is out there. And the report only comes from one or two places. Let's play this out for a second, OK? When the insiders get a report, it either comes from directly a team source, A, or it comes from directly the players or their representatives, B. There's no C, there's no D.
"When the information is now public that the injury is now worse than initially thought, and the Giants were the people that told the national audience and Giants fan base at halftime it's not that bad, and that by proxy means you've given the fan base bad information and far more positive than the reality of the situation, why would you leave the fan base with bad information? Why not just, at that press conference, that took place within an hour of the report coming out that the injury to Jaxson Dart was far more serious, why not acknowledge it?"
Carton added: "You'd think that after a decade of losing and all the promise this year, the least the Giants could do is be straight with their fan base."
It's a bleak outlook for Giants fans moving forward this season, and it hurts even more considering the hype that followed Week 1's victory over the Dallas Cowboys. It felt that the Harbaugh era, led by Dart at quarterback, was on to bigger and better things than the second-worst record in the NFL over the last decade.
And while the Giants could still string together wins, especially with easier opponents in "toss-up games" over the next few weeks, Carton doesn't want the fan base to have any false hope.
"Don't get it twisted: the New York Giants' season is over," he said.
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