Hour 2: Pat Leonard on Giants QB Struggles & NFL Pregame Show Critique

**Craig Carton** (0:09)
305 Carton Show with Big Mac Football Friday, Football Saturday. You finally made it.
We made it from the Super Bowl to the first weekend, official weekend, of course, the Hall of Fame game is already more than a week old. But the first official weekend, the opening of the training camp games for both the New York Giants tonight at 7 o'clock against Tampa Bay. Then of course, you have the New York Giants against the Vikings. It met life tomorrow afternoon. And the man that now loves West Virginia, I heard he's buying a house down there from the Daily News and the Talking Ball Podcast is our pal, Patty Leonard. Pat, what's going on today, buddy? How you been?

**Pat Leonard** (0:48)
Craig, doing well. Surprisingly enjoyable there in West Virginia, man.

**Craig Carton** (0:52)
Well, you were at $1,000 a night resort. Of course it was enjoyable.

**Pat Leonard** (0:57)
No, we did it right. We did the Airbnb or the VRBO down the street. So a little bit of a boy's night out for a couple of weeks down the street from the Greenbrier.

**Craig Carton** (1:05)
And did you leave Greenbrier up or down from your nightly visits to a certain location?

**Pat Leonard** (1:13)
Actually, disappointingly enough, you need to stay at the resort to partake.

**Chris McMonigle** (1:18)
Is that right? You can't walk in off the street?

**Pat Leonard** (1:20)
You know, I've covered sports in the garden. I've covered the Giants. I'm used to people telling me I can't go places.

**Craig Carton** (1:28)
All right, let's get to the Giants. That's most of your focus. I was trying to figure out, Pat, and I don't have an answer, maybe you do, why would John Harbaugh be so coy about whether or not Jackson Dart's going to get snaps tomorrow afternoon? I don't get it.

**Pat Leonard** (1:45)
I don't either, Craig. I think we're starting to see regular season slash game week John Harbaugh, but he's actually been pretty forthright in his press conferences, whether it's been injuries or player evaluations, he's talked about who's rising and falling on the depth chart. It seems like with the offensive install and performance, they're trying to batten down the hatches a little bit because they feel like they're on track with their process, but from the outside looking in, it doesn't look like it's going on track. So my vantage point is that Harbaugh knows what he wants to do. He just doesn't want to make any more out of it than it already is.

**Craig Carton** (2:23)
But there's no upside.
It's a preseason game. Even if he does play, and I think he will, I think he should, we'll get to that in a second, he's going to play a couple of series, maybe even a quarter, and then he's going to come out, and that's just the way it is. But Joe Burrow played yesterday. Kirk Cousins played yesterday, and I'm not saying you have to do what those teams do, but Jackson Dart's got, what, 12 games in his NFL career? Jackson Dart needs to play football.

**Pat Leonard** (2:52)
Yeah, no, it's unusual, especially because hardball, like in his second breath, he kind of acknowledges what you just said. He said, Jackson's really young, he still has a lot of football that he hasn't played. So he's almost kind of acknowledging that he needs it. But you know, hardball and the competitive advantage stuff is a little bit weird, Craig. Like he, you know, there are policies around video and practice and what we're allowed to do there have changed. He's really kind of tightening it up. And I personally think that that can inch towards paranoia, towards things that don't have to do with actually winning and losing a football game. So I'm in lockstep with you and I think, you know, he does need to play and I think Harbaugh knows that.

**Craig Carton** (3:29)
Now from the coverage I read, obviously, I was not in West Virginia or the couple of practices they had here leading into tomorrow afternoon.
My gut from what I've read from what you wrote and others that have covered the Giants is that Jackson Dart has not had a fantastic summer. He's had moments, but it has not been consistently very good. Is that a fair read on that or no?

**Pat Leonard** (3:52)
Absolutely, yeah. He has had some bright spots, but in large part, he has the number one thing is he the ball is not coming out quickly and he's not throwing the ball to the receivers enough like Isaiah likely is having a fantastic camp. Yeah, Dart is essentially spamming him. But when it comes to seeing them down the field, throwing it down the field, completing passes down the field, you can tell that he's been straining and struggling at that.