The Chargers defense will see a rookie quarterback in Week 4.
Giants Head Coach Brian Daboll confirmed Wednesday that Jaxson Dart will start Sunday and be New York's starter for the rest of the 2025 season.
What does Chargers Head Coach Jim Harbaugh expect to see from Dart?
"That he's going to be good," Harbaugh said. "Preparing for him to start, you look at the tape from the games he played. It'll be a challenge."
He later added: " He's a good player, you can already see that on the tape we have seen. Presence, mobility, sees the entire field, accurate thrower. All the good things, he's got it. He's got that it factor, too, can see that as well."
Chargers Defensive Coordinator Jesse Minter echoed Harbaugh's sentiment.
"Super talented guy, first round pick for a reason, great college career," Minter said of Dart. "He played in a very versatile offense in college, I think Lane Kiffin does a great job with quarterbacks.
"He's run a lot of concepts. He's run tempo, he's run pro-style, he's kind of run everything," Minter added. "Then he gets there, you look at his preseason success, he moved the team pretty much every time he was in there. It's a great challenge."
Russell Wilson, who had started the Giants first three games, will be the backup for the remainder of the year.
The Giants drafted Dart in the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft with the 25th overall pick. New York traded up to get Dart, sending Nos. 34 and 99, plus a 2026 third-round pick, to the Texans.
Dart starred at Ole Miss, where he threw for 4,279 yards and 29 touchdowns in 2024 to lead the Rebels to a 10-3 record.
The Chargers defense ranks ninth in the NFL by allowing just 182.0 passing yards per game, but Chargers coaches and players said this week that there's a but of an unknown with Dart.
"There's a little bit of unknown. Him and Russell Wilson, I would say have a different strengths as quarterbacks," Minter said. "The unknown of maybe they tweak some things. I would imagine, as I would be with a player, you're going to try to find things the guy does well and let him do that.
"You're not going to try and force him to do some things maybe he's not good at. I would think that would be probably their mindset," Minter continued. "Just looking at a lot of things he's been good at, it's another version of a training camp game for us in a sense that I feel like they can go in a lot of different directions.
"I'm not really going to speculate or guess what they're going to run, I'm going to try to have our guys prepared for a bunch of different things, be ready to adjust as the game goes on and know it's really more about how we play than how they play," Minter added.
Cam Hart said: "Very much similar [to a Week 1 game]. Especially since they can use him in completely different ways than they used Russell Wilson. They've had packages with [Dart] in that Cowboys game, and he can do different things than Russell. Just got to be ready for it all and expect it all."
