October 9, 2026
October 9, 2026
New York Giants’ 2025 Season Recap
The New York Giants’ 2025 season was a year of collapse and rebirth wrapped into the same seventeen games. New York finished 4-13, last in the NFC East, and missed the playoffs for a third straight year. Yet the record hides the most important development in years. A rookie quarterback named Jaxson Dart seized the starting job in September and never looked back. Brian Burns delivered one of the finest pass-rushing seasons in franchise history. Brian Daboll, meanwhile, lost his job in November after a string of late-game meltdowns. By January, John Harbaugh was walking through the door, and the franchise finally had a direction worth believing in.
General manager Joe Schoen entered the offseason under heavy pressure to fix the quarterback position. His answer came in layers. Veterans Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston arrived as a bridge, with Wilson named the Week 1 starter. The draft carried the real ambition. New York took Penn State pass rusher Abdul Carter third overall, pairing him with Burns on the edge. Later, Schoen traded back into the first round at No. 25 to grab Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart. In the fourth round, the Giants added Arizona State running back Cam Skattebo, whose bruising style quickly won over the locker room. The plan was simple on paper. Wilson would steady the ship while Dart learned. That plan lasted exactly three weeks.
The opener at Washington set a grim tone, as the offense managed only six points in a 21-6 loss. Then came Week 2 in Dallas, the wildest game of the year. Wilson threw for a career-high 450 yards, and Malik Nabers hauled in two touchdowns. With 25 seconds left, Wilson found Nabers for 48 yards and a 37-34 lead. Victory seemed certain. Then Brandon Aubrey drilled a 64-yard field goal at the gun, and Dallas won it in overtime. The Giants’ recap of the 40-37 heartbreaker captured how close the team came. A flat 22-9 loss to Kansas City followed, and Daboll made the change.
Dart’s first start against the Los Angeles Chargers carried the weight of an entire fan base’s hopes. He answered with poise, clawing out a 21-18 win that was also the 750th victory in franchise history. The joy came with a brutal cost, though. Nabers tore his ACL in that same game, ending his season and stripping Dart of his best weapon. The rookie kept swinging anyway. Two weeks later, on a Thursday night at MetLife Stadium, the Giants toppled the defending champions. Skattebo ran for three touchdowns as Dart dazzled in a 34-17 rout of the Eagles. It was the franchise’s first Thursday night win since 2015. For one electric evening, the rebuild felt ahead of schedule.
Everything that went wrong this season traced back to one Sunday in Denver. New York led 19-0 entering the fourth quarter and 26-8 with just over ten minutes left. Then Bo Nix took over. The Broncos scored 33 points in the final quarter alone. Dart punched in a one-yard touchdown with 37 seconds left to retake the lead, but the extra point sailed wide. Wil Lutz then hit a 39-yard field goal as time expired, and Denver escaped 33-32. No collapse in the New York Giants’ 2025 season stung worse, and that loss broke something in this team. A week later in Philadelphia, Skattebo dislocated his ankle, ending a rookie season that had made him a fan favorite. Losses to San Francisco and Chicago followed, and Dart left the Bears game with a concussion.
The morning after the Chicago defeat, ownership decided it had seen enough. Daboll was fired on November 10 with the team sitting at 2-8. His four-year record finished at 20-40-1, and ESPN’s breakdown of the decision pointed to the blown leads that defined his final months. Offensive coordinator Mike Kafka took over as interim head coach. Defensive coordinator Shane Bowen was dismissed two weeks later. With Dart sidelined, Winston started back-to-back games against Green Bay and Detroit. The Detroit game summed up the year. New York led 27-17 late, only to lose 34-27 in overtime. That defeat made the Giants the first team eliminated from playoff contention. Seven of their 13 losses came by one score. That number told the story of a team always one stop away.
Dart returned in Week 13 at New England, but the results stayed stubbornly familiar. The Patriots pulled away for a 33-15 win. Washington then held on for a 29-21 victory at MetLife Stadium. A week later, Minnesota escaped with a 16-13 decision in a game that hinged on a handful of snaps. The losing streak reached five games. Still, the rookie never shrank from the moment. He kept attacking defenses with his arm and his legs, and the offense rarely looked overwhelmed even as the defeats piled up. The roster around him was thin, injured, and playing for an interim staff. That he kept producing anyway said plenty about what the franchise had found.
Brian Burns turned a lost season into a personal masterpiece. He piled up 16.5 sacks, second in the league behind only Myles Garrett. That total tied for the fourth-most in a single season by any Giant. His 31 quarterback hits were the most by a Giant since the statistic began being tracked in 2006. Burns earned a Pro Bowl berth and second-team All-Pro honors. Carter, meanwhile, flashed the disruption that made him a top-three pick, ranking among the league leaders in pressures. Bobby Okereke anchored the middle with 143 tackles, the fourth-most in franchise history. For a defense that struggled to close games, those performances offered a foundation to build on.
The New York Giants’ 2025 season ended with a flicker of momentum that mattered more than the standings. After five straight losses, the Giants rolled past Las Vegas 34-10. They followed with a 34-17 win over Dallas in the finale, snapping a nine-game losing streak against their rival. Dart closed with 2,272 passing yards, passing Charlie Conerly’s 1948 mark for the second-most by a Giants rookie. The team’s season-ending notes credited him with 24 total touchdowns, third-most by a rookie in franchise history. Nine of those came on the ground. Wan’Dale Robinson topped 1,000 receiving yards for the first time. Tyrone Tracy Jr. joined Odell Beckham Jr. and Saquon Barkley as the only Giants with 1,000 scrimmage yards in each of their first two seasons. Even the offensive line, a long-running weakness, held up as one of the better pass-protecting units in the league.
The offseason that followed confirmed how much this season had changed the franchise. Ownership kept Schoen for a fifth year but went outside the building for its next leader. In January 2026, the Giants hired John Harbaugh as head coach after the Ravens parted ways with him. Harbaugh arrived with a Super Bowl ring and nearly two decades of sustained winning in Baltimore. He also arrived with something his predecessors lacked: a young quarterback already proven under fire. The New York Giants’ 2025 season will be remembered for its blown leads and its fired coach. It deserves to be remembered just as much as the year Jaxson Dart became the franchise’s quarterback. Few 4-13 seasons ever end with this much reason for hope.
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