On the field following the New York Giants’ dramatic win over the Arizona Cardinals last Sunday, after the Giants quarterback Jameis Winston praised God and wondered in amazement at “so many supernatural things” that had happened, after he credited the Giants’ preparation and hard work and the “divine interaction” that led to Deonte Banks’s pick-six to seal the victory (“Just getting off his injury!”), after his eyes flew up to meet the gaze of the Lord, after his impassioned voice trailed off into a cloud of “wow”s, a sideline reporter for CBS, Aditi Kinkhabwala, changed the subject. The game was “also,” she said, a prime example of “the Jameis Winston experience.” So was the interview.
She didn’t need to define the Jameis Winston experience. The Giants’ 36–24 win over the Cardinals had been a refresher course, a reminder of the highs and the lows. Winston had thrown passes into pockets of space the size of a cupped hand, and launched sudden and astonishing deep spirals far down the field. He had also spun into sacks, and he threw interceptions to wide-open defenders. It wasn’t clear whether he was responsible for the Giants’ win—their third in his three games on the field this season, and his second as a starter—or for their close proximity to disaster. Winston had thrown three touchdowns and two interceptions, Kinkhabwala noted. How did he recover? What did he tell himself?
Winston closed his eyes. “One thing I do,” he said, swaying his head like a preacher feeling the spirit, hammering a clenched fist in the air for emphasis, “is forgetting that is behind me, and reaching forward to what is ahead.” His eyes flew open and he pointed at the camera. “You think that I’m joking,” he went on, now facing the camera squarely, like an actor breaking the fourth wall. “But Philippians 3:13 states this, and you have to do it, no matter the circumstances, conditions, or facts.” He had desired a Giants win, he said to the camera, and God had willed it.
Was this a sincere call to faith? Or was it a performance, a kind of joke? Was it funny, inspiring, tiresome, all three? “And what about the Giants?” Kinkhabwala said, or tried to say, but Winston was already answering. He had already moved on.
I, for one, did not think that Winston was joking. How else to understand the Winston experience except as a forgetting, a perpetual letting go? The sacred and the profane collapse around him. Before he was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in 2015, as the No. 1 draft pick, it was hard to know what to think—or what not to. His talent wasn’t in question. He’d won the Heisman as a nineteen-year-old freshman at Florida State, the youngest winner in history at the time, and led the team to the national championship. He’d been suspended for a game the following season, after standing on a table in the student union and yelling, “Fuck her right in the pussy,” referencing a crude meme that was popular at the time. He was cited for shoplifting crab legs at a Publix grocery store. He was also accused of rape, an allegation that he strongly denied and for which he was neither fully investigated nor criminally charged. (After his accuser sued Florida State for violating her Title IX rights by improperly investigating, the school paid a nine-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar settlement. She also sued Winston, who countersued; the parties settled, with the terms undisclosed. The university did not admit liability as part of the settlement.)
His first pass as a Buc was intercepted and returned all the way—a welcome-to-the-league pick-six. Later that season, he threw five touchdowns in one game. The pattern was set. He wowed crowds with his daring, and also for being a dope. He gave viral pre-game speeches and made funny memes. He was beloved by his teammates and married his high-school sweetheart. He spoke fervently about his faith. He was suspended for three games for violating the N.F.L.’s personal-conduct policy, after an Uber driver accused him of groping her, another accusation that he denied.
In 2019, he became the first player in N.F.L. history to throw thirty touchdowns and thirty interceptions in the same season. He also led the league in passing yards. His time in Tampa Bay was considered something of a disappointment. It ended when Tom Brady arrived the next year, and Brady led what was essentially the same team to the Super Bowl title. Winston brought the Winston experience to the New Orleans Saints, then to the Cleveland Browns, and finally, last year, to the New York Giants, where he was named the third-string quarterback, behind Russell Wilson and Jaxson Dart. Wilson was eventually demoted, making Winston the primary backup. Right before the start of the season, his teammates voted him onto their leadership council. In September, he was in a DoorDash commercial asking if the crab legs were “free ninety-nine.”
When he was a rookie, it had seemed to me that Winston had come to the N.F.L. for a fun time, not a long time. That was eleven years ago.
The Giants’ usual starting quarterback, Jaxson Dart, is twenty-three. He wears eye black smeared under his right eye only—an Anakin Skywalker reference, apparently. Dart went to Ole Miss, a place where the past has been repurposed. There are, after all, different ways of forgetting and moving on.
Dart began last season as Wilson’s backup before establishing himself as the team’s future, though there have been some concerns about his head. For starters, he is not inclined to protect it. (“We’re not playing soccer out here,” he said once, when asked about his very physical—some would say reckless—style of play.) And he is still learning to make good decisions amid the high-speed chaos of a typical down. He’s the rare young quarterback who can enter an N.F.L. game and command it immediately. It takes time for experience to accumulate, for patterns to emerge. But Dart seemed to be making progress at the start of the season, and the Giants, with a high-profile new coach, John Harbaugh, soundly beat the Dallas Cowboys in Week One. They seemed in a good position to dominate the weak N.F.C. East. Then, during a game against the Los Angeles Rams, Dart tore up his knee. The injury would require season-ending surgery.
Winston was brought into the game against the Titans and was terrible, but the Giants held on to win, 12–7. He was hardly better a week later, but again the Giants eked out a win. After the victory over the Cardinals, he’s now 2–0 in games he’s started, and the Giants, at 3–1, sit atop their division.
After Dart’s injury, the team traded a fifth-round draft pick to the Minnesota Vikings for another quarterback, J. J. McCarthy, also a former first-rounder with a national-championship pedigree. McCarthy bombed out of Minnesota, and Winston remains the Giants starter—for now. But at some point the team will probably reach for the future. Winston is thirty-two now. McCarthy, like Dart, is twenty-three. In the meantime, are we supposed to enjoy the Winston experience? Survive it? Decry it? It has come to feel like self-parody.
Whether faith can be justified on any terms but its own is an epistemological question beyond this columnist’s understanding. The same might be asked of the Winston experience. But, for now, winning washes away many sins. After the close win over the Cardinals, Harbaugh, the Giants coach, who signed a five-year contract worth a hundred million dollars in January, was philosophical. The team hadn’t given up. They’d played well enough. “That’s what winning is,” he said. “That’s what winning teams do, they find ways to win games. That’s why they’re winning teams.” Indeed, that’s what winning is. ♦
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