Russell Wilson was proving his critics wrong. Then it all went wrong.
After spending the previous week hearing calls for his job, New York Giants quarterback Russell Wilson was issuing a spectacular rebuttal Sunday in Dallas.
Then, while closing out an overtime loss, Wilson added even more fuel to the criticism.
As part of a wild fourth quarter that saw the Giants and Cowboys combine for 41 points, the 36-year-old Wilson looked like he would play the role of hero just one week after his ineffectual 168-yard performance in a loss sparked discussions about how long it might take for New York to supplant Wilson on the depth chart and let rookie quarterback and recent first-round pick Jaxson Dart develop.
Dart did briefly play Sunday in Dallas as part of a specialized package. The big surprise was how strongly Wilson was justifying New York’s decision to stick with the veteran after his head coach, Brian Daboll, had initially been non-committal to keeping Wilson as the starter.
On his way to 450 passing yards against Dallas, just two shy of his career high, Wilson threw his day’s second touchdown pass, a 32-yarder to take a 30-27 lead with 2:44 remaining in the fourth quarter.
When Dallas answered nearly two minutes later to go ahead, 34-30, the Giants got the ball back with just 52 seconds left to either score a touchdown or lose. Wilson’s abilities have fluctuated with age, and is no longer the dynamic runner that helped Seattle once win a Super Bowl. But he can still throw a deep ball, as he showed again on what looked to be the game-winning strike with just 25 seconds left, a 48-yard bomb he lofted over two closing defenders into the hands of Malik Nabers. It was the sixth lead change of the fourth quarter alone.
Yet the game wasn’t over, headed to overtime instead after Dallas moved into position for its star kicker, Brandon Aubrey, to make a 64-yard field goal to tie as time expired in regulation.
In overtime, Wilson completed his first two passes. Then began a stretch of plays that figure to reignite the Dart discussion.
Wilson was sacked and fumbled out of bounds when the ball came loose as he was throwing for a six-yard loss on second-and-three. He then threw an incompletion to force a New York punt.
When the Giants got the ball back again, all they needed was to gain about 30 yards to get into field goal range. But Wilson’s first pass of the drive lost four yards and his second was a high-arcing pass thrown deep to where he thought Nabers would be, even though Nabers was running a route in a different direction. The pass was intercepted, and Dallas won four plays later on a field goal, 40-37.
It was the Giants’ ninth-consecutive loss to their NFC East division rival.
“I thought he played well, made some plays, attacked certain things we wanted to attack that second-and-three it kind of slipped out of his hand and it pushed us back there,” New York coach Daboll told reporters when asked how he reacted to Wilson’s big fourth quarter with his struggles in overtime.
Of the interception, Daboll was circumspect, calling “that deep shot kind of at the end, the communication, not a bad communication, just communication … again, this one’s tough.”
For New York, which started the season 0-2 for the seventh time in the last nine years, the answer isn’t so easy as inserting Dart. Wilson had high-profile miscues, and a role in New York scoring on just one of their five trips inside the Dallas 20-yard line. Yet the rest of his team was called for 14 penalties for 160 yards, as well. And the Giants have been in no hurry to shift quarterbacks, ESPN reported, because it’s one thing to start a rookie quarterback but another thing to protect him, and star offensive lineman Andrew Thomas remains sidelined by injury.
With a new team, Wilson now faces a familiar criticism. Speculation about whether he is the right quarterback for the job ever since Seattle traded him to Denver in 2022. Pronounced as the player the Broncos would build around, Wilson lasted only 30 games before Denver was so motivated to bench, and later release, him that it ate $85 million in his salary. Wilson moved on to Pittsburgh, where his ability to still throw a pristine deep ball helped the Steelers win five of his first six starts. But when they then lost their final four games of the season, Wilson was back on the look for a new employer who would believe in him.
One of the outstanding questions of Week 2 is how much longer that belief in Wilson remains in New York.