Mike Kafka on Jaxson Dart’s First Start | New York Giants

Mike Kafka on Jaxson Dart’s First Start | New York Giants

So, when you look back at the tape, just what impressed you about uh Jackson’s first start? I thought Jackson’s a nice job. He was really He’s really confident. He was poised. Thought he controlled uh the line of scrimmage. I thought he handled the tempo really well. And then just kind of getting through the es and flow of the game like something happened. Um adjusting on the sideline, the communication with the players, and it was back and forth. It was really good to see, you know, the O line come up to him, the receivers, the running backs, tight ends, and that dialogue be really good on the sideline. So, that was that was a really uh cool thing to see. You alluded to it last week when you guys are going up tempo like that, you’re and he’s at the line before the 15 seconds. Are you still being on the play call, you giving him like, “Hey, watch this. Watch that.” Yeah. Yeah. You’re able to talk to him as as much as you can. So, I try to give him as much information. if I see any keys or anything that something to alert him to, you know, I try to keep my eyes down field on that and to help him out as best I can. Like from a play calling standpoint, you have, I don’t know, 10, 13 plays a game where Malik Neighbors gets targeted. What happens now without neighbors? Do you spread those around? Do you, I don’t know, become less pass oriented? What happens without neighbors? Yeah, Coach Gro does an awesome job of getting the guys prepared. So, it’s really just a next man up mentality. uh whether it’s Bo, Jaylen, um you know, again, the roster moves as we get moving if there’s a guy coming up or not. But I think those guys just step up into the roles, Wandelle, Slay, the leaders that they are. And um and continue to kind of carry the torch because I think, you know, we have some explosive guys in that room. And so I think, you know, the more the ball can get spread out to those guys, the better. One of those guys you just mentioned, Jaylen. Jaylen, the last his rookie year, the last time you were calling plays, he was a factor. He had 23 catches, 372 I think, and he hasn’t really done much since then. What do you How do you get him more involved? Do you think he can get back to that level and beyond that he was at then? Because haven’t seen it in a long time. Yeah. Yeah. I think very highly of Jaylen and he’s done a great job in practice whether or not that, you know, the game how that game kind of declares itself. I think that’ll be, you know, we’ll see how that how that goes. Moving forward. Yeah, moving forward. I mean, Jaylen’s doing everything we’re asking him to do. He’s doing he’s having a great week of practice so far. uh getting himself involved in the game plan and understanding what his role is going to be and everybody that role will change every week. So, you know, if he has an opportunity though downfield to make a play or make a play in space, I I expect him to do that and I know he will because he’s prepping his butt off. like what are the what are the challenges for Jackson now and and maybe for you as the play caller too that you you know you’ve put out a a game’s worth of film for defenses to to you know bite into it. The thing that I think we we want to talk about just in the quarterback room is especially with Jackson is all right that was a good learning experience. You know, you can always kind of build on that the good, the not so good. You know, you can learn from those situations. So, as as we’re going through the week and learning from, oh, this is what happened during the game, this is what happened during the practice of last week. Now, we can start pulling from those experiences a little bit. And that’s just gonna help really any player, but especially a young player like Jackson where, you know, now you’re starting to now he’s starting to bank game reps. He’s starting to bank different looks from defenses. He’s starting to see, you know, the stuff on tape carry over onto the g onto the field. And so I think it’s just he’s he’s kind of creating this bigger picture for himself in terms of, oh yeah, I’ve seen that before. I’ve seen that body language. So now he’s banking those experiences and now it’s one thing to describe it, you know, as a coach, but once you actually are in there and you feel it and you see it, oh, like it triggers just a different type of response. So it’s been cool to watch him kind of go through that series of uh events. Where do you stand on just his running and his scrambling ability? Obviously, he’s got powerful legs, but in terms of being maybe too reckless at times or just the decision making, it’s it’s the age-old question of the running quarterbacks. And um we had it when I was with Patrick, even with Daniel, you know, and his ability to run and just protecting yourself. I think, you know, you and even myself when I played, like you don’t really know till you get hit. Uh once you get hit, you kind of learn a little bit from that. Um but Jackson’s a you know, he’s a tough player. He and he’s he’s competitive and you don’t want to take that away from him. I think you see it across the league with the guys and I think just got to be smart. There’s a time when you want to slide and get down. There’s a time where you got to go get that yard. Um, you know, like we put him in a couple situations on short yardage where like, hey, it’s you one-on-one. Like, this is where the numbers end up, make a play for us, and he did. And, um, you know, I think there’s a time and a place for that. Does it every play? I don’t know. But, you know, I think there’s a just you got to be smart in certain situations. If you’re in the open field, you got the easy yard, take a take one hit off of yourself. But, again, I don’t want to put the players in a box at all. So, it’s just a it’s just a smart balance that we got to work through. And that’ll only come with time and experience. Mike, do you need to dig a little bit deeper into the playbook just in terms of trying to scheme guys open without without Malik, you know, trying to to find opportunities for guys to get plays? I I think I have a lot of trust in our our skill group all AC across the board. Um, you know, as to do our due diligence as a coaching staff and scheme guys open. Yeah, that’s what you want to look to try and do is get, you know, make it easy for the quarterback and have a guy wide wide open. But um I mean our guys I I trust our guys to go and win versus aggressive man coverage. We we practice against it. We work against it. Um and so yeah, I trust those guys to go work. You have to pay uh you have to pay Andy Reid, Mahomes, and Kelsey a fee for stealing that that that shovel pass that Theo No, that was a good design, man. Karm TK, our run game division, Liddell, those guys put together a good plan. That was a good that was a nice play. This this was the second time Jackson had to be taken out of a game for a concussion test that that he passed and didn’t have a concussion. Is there anything you can do as a coach to kind of coach him around like how his body language is after he gets up? You know, I we talked about it, but I don’t know how much I can do about it. I mean, it’s just they got the professionals up there that are looking for it. I know it’s a point of emphasis and it’s it’s probably the right thing to do. You know, it’s just for the player just to make sure he’s healthy and make sure he’s right. Obviously, you’d never want to lose a quarterback for, you know, how everybody plays, but um I think it’s the right thing to do. It’s kind of out of our hands. It’s just the nature of how it is right now, but I think it’s smart for the league to do that. Protect the quarterbacks, but you know, yeah, like don’t walk up, you know, shaking your head and all that stuff like that’s they’re probably going to get taken out. So, Mike, Sunday was Andrew’s first full game in, you know, in a long time. Yeah. Does he look like the player that you remember from 2022, the last time he was still, you know, he was fully healthy. Does he look like that guy? I’m really proud of at you know, the first game only had hit a limited snap count, 20some plays. Then he comes out the very next week and plays however many 70s something plays. And it was just a gritty effort by one of our captains, one of our leaders in the room. And I was really proud of him for doing that for us. But yeah, he looked like his looked like his normal self. I’m sure as he’s getting into the groove of it, I’m sure he’ll start to feel better about it. But to me, I love having him out there. He was certainly a calming presence on the sideline. Um his demeanor and then the way he played I thought was um you know, at the level that we expect him to play, high level. What challenges do the Saints present on defense? Seemed like they gave Josh Allen and the Bills a hard time last week. Yeah, and really all their games have been has come down to like the two-minute drill minus, you know, Seattle where a couple things kind of got out of hand. But I think this is a veteran a veteran defense. Um they’ve they’ve played together for a long time. They got defensive coordinator. Coach Staley is a hell of a coach. They’ll have these guys prepared. They’re aggressive. Um you know, they’re at home, too, so they have crowd noise working for them. But I mean, these guys fly around. They’re savvy. Some guys on the defensive end that are really, really good. the back end, they have physical, tall, long, I have length. So, and they and they present a mix of coverages and fronts that you got to be prepared for. So, we got a big time challenge ahead of us. Um, but I’m excited to get to work on it today. Mike, does it look like a steady defense already? Because he hasn’t been there a whole lot since February. Yeah, certainly familiar from my time in Kansas City with him and when he was in, you know, in LA for those years. So there’s there’s definitely some some carryover that you see different personnel, which what a what a good coach does is he molds it to the personnel that he has. So a little bit different than what he had uh with the Chargers that he has now, but I still see a lot of the same, you know, points of reference from from that scheme and showing up, but he’s just putting different guys in different spots.

Assistant Head Coach/Offensive Coordinator Mike Kafka speaks to the media Thursday from the Quest Diagnostics Training Center.

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