Brian Daboll sits down in his office with Giants.com each Thursday morning for a conversation about the latest at 1925 Giants Drive. This week, the head coach talks about the quarterback change to rookie Jaxson Dart and the matchup ahead with the 3-0 Chargers.

Q: You've now been through the first practice with Dart as the guy. What were you looking for going into that and what did you see?

Daboll: "Just go out there and do his job. I guess that's the easiest way to put it."

Q: Is there a different look in his eye?

Daboll: "No, he's a pretty consistent young guy. He puts a lot into it. It seems like he's basically lived in the facility since he's been here. He's never not here, so he's putting everything he has into it."

Q: He said yesterday the scheme is suitable to his skills. What does he bring to the offense?

Daboll: "He throws the football well and he's athletic. He's smart. Again, when you play a young player, particularly at that spot, there's going to be ups, there's going to be downs, and he's got the right mindset for it. And he's looking forward to it."

Q: Starting a first-round quarterback is a big moment for any organization. He will be just the fourth QB taken in Round 1 to start as a rookie for the Giants in the Common Draft era. How do you manage expectations?

Daboll: "I think that he just has to do his job. He doesn't have to do anything more than that. And everyone around him – players, coaches – have to do their job. He doesn't have to come in and do anything extraordinary. You have to be able to manage from drive to drive, go through ups and downs during the game, and again, it just falls back on doing his job."

Q: You gave him a lot of pop quizzes throughout the summer. You threw him in unexpectedly in a fire-drill situation in the middle of a drive in the preseason. You told him to handle the coin toss moments before a game. What did you hope to achieve in doing all that leading up to this moment?

Daboll: "You do everything you can do to coach him up. It's a tough position to play. It's a tough position to play as a young player. Look at all the guys that have come out in the last however many years. You've just got to stay level-headed, keep grinding, hit every situation head on, learn from it. If it comes up again in a game, you learn from it. Don't get too high. Don't get too low. Keep building. Keep building him up. The young man has a lot of confidence, which is a good thing. He's smart. He's got a lot of good intangibles, but again, this is something you've got to keep building because there's going to be ups, there's going to be downs. When I talked to him in the draft process, I think that he's got a good mindset for it."

Q: What was the first time Jaxson Dart got on your radar?

Daboll: "Right when the season ended when we started looking at players."

Q: When did you start to see the light turn on for him?

Daboll: "We put a lot of work into the process before we got him. Kind of what we saw is what we're getting."

Q: Russell Wilson is handling it like a pro, which is not a surprise. How unique is that for a player with his accolades?

Daboll: "Russ has seen a lot of football and been around a lot of situations. Look back to when he was a rookie in '12 and the situation he was in. So, there's probably not much that Russ hasn't experienced, and again, he's been nothing but a pro."

Q: He mentioned that rookie experience with the Seahawks when he was looking for help and looking for answers from the vets.

Daboll: "I think it's good for Jaxson and has been to have those two guys (Wilson and Jameis Winston) with him. They've been helpful in a number of areas."

Q: Moving on from the quarterbacks. You said this isn't about one player. It's about the entire team. What keys are you stressing this week?

Daboll: "We've all got to do our job. We're playing a team that's 3-0. They're playing good, complementary football. They've won three division games. They've played on the road. They've played down in another country (Week 1 in Brazil against the Chiefs). They're confident. That's what happens when you win early in a season. Our job is to make sure that we do the fundamental things. We've got to tackle and block and throw and catch and play good situational football and play good complementary football. And that's what we're trying to do."

Q: Could you give me the football PhD explanation about the split-safety look you got last week from the Chiefs and what that does especially to player like Malik Nabers?

Daboll: "Well, there's a variety of split-safeties you can play. There's Quarters, where there are four [players] deep and three underneath. There's Quarter, Quarter-Half, where they play Cover 2 to a side, which is a high safety and a low corner and Quarters to the other side. There's Cover 2. There are variations of Cover 2. You need to be able to run the football, too, when they're playing a bunch of split-safety, which means you've got an even fight in the box. Again, it depends what split-safety coverage there is. You've got to be content with taking completions. Everything is not going to be a 40-, 50-yard throw. You have to be patient. You have to have good run-after-catch. You have to have good spacing in the passing game. You need to run the football."

Q: Which brings us to Cam Skattebo, who really took over when Tyrone Tracy Jr. went down. Sometimes a hardnosed player like him doesn't also catch the ball. How unique is he?

Daboll: "I've been around bigger backs that run with good pad level and power that could also catch. He's another guy that, throughout the [draft] process, what you saw is what you get – competitive, tough, instinctive. I think he's going to be a good player for a long time."

Q: When people talk about him, the first thing that comes to mind are stories like him running into telephone poles as a kid. What about his vision and football IQ? Are those underrated parts of his game? And along those lines, he missed a lot of time in the offseason. That often holds rookies back. But it looked like every time he came back in, he didn't miss a beat.

Daboll: "He's done a nice job for us. There will be things that he goes through as a young player, but he's continuing to improve. And that's what you want out of your young players, guys like him and Abdul [Carter] and now we're getting Jaxson ready to go. It's a good young group of guys to work with."

Q: How important is his style against a Jim Harbaugh team?

Daboll: "He's a good teammate. And for a rookie, he's a good leader. He plays with a lot of juice. He has a lot of juice. He loves the game of football. He's tough. I think you can't have too many tough guys. It should wear off on other guys. He likes speaking with his pads."

Q: That sequence where he had one and then Theo Johnson on the next play fights for extra yards. Is that what you're talking about?

Daboll: "Yeah. Theo is a tough guy. Again, there are some things that we have to get better at, obviously. We're not where we want to be, but like a lot of these young guys that we have, they are continuing to build and have the right mindset. "

Q: You got Andrew Thomas back last week. What did you see in his first game in over 11 months?

Daboll: "It was good to have him back. He's a good player. He's a really good lineman in this league. He's a good left tackle. So, the more of your best players that you can have out there on a consistent basis, that's the way you want it."

Q: Is the Chargers' tackle Joe Alt vs. Brian Burns the one-on-one matchup to watch?

Daboll: "We have a lot of guys that will be lined up, edge guys that we like. I know they like Alt. Alt is a good player. It's going to come down to 11 guys doing their job, but they've got a lot of good football players on their team. He's certainly one of them. The quarterback (Justin Herbert) is certainly one of them, their three receivers, they've got group of tight ends that they use in a variety of ways. The young running back, O (Omarion Hampton). Derwin James Jr. is one of the better players in the league on the defensive side of the ball. The way he plays, he's a really good player."

Q: He certainly left an impression on you when you were preparing for him in college. (Daboll, then offensive coordinator of No. 1 Alabama, opened the 2017 championship season against James and No. 3 Florida State at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.)

Daboll: "I remember getting ready to play and I'm watching this guy and he's playing in the secondary and he's blitzing everywhere. I'm like, 'We might need a chip plan for this guy.' Usually you have a chip plan for these unbelievable defensive ends and things like that. And I'm watching this guy play and I'm like, 'Holy smokes, this guy is all over the place.' He's one of those guys that moves around and looks like he was built in a laboratory. He's doing the same thing here."

Q: The Chargers are playing him all over place?

Daboll: "There's really not much he can't do. If you wanted to put him on the edge, you can play him on the edge and do that. If you wanted to play him at a linebacker spot or where he plays in nickel, he can play the deep part of the field, he can cover. He's one of the better players in our league. He's a productive guy and a damn good defensive back in this league."

Q: You can't talk about a Jim Harbaugh and Greg Roman team without the running game. Najee Harris is down with the torn Achilles, your guy from Alabama. (Harris made his collegiate debut in the aforementioned game against Florida State.) What does the rookie Omarion Hampton bring to the team?

Daboll: "He's big. He's strong. He's powerful. He breaks tackles. I just think they've done a good job. They have an elite quarterback, and they're using him that way, particularly early in games and they're throwing it around a bunch, which is maybe a little bit different. You never know what you're going to get, but they still have that physical style of play where they get big. You think back to the old Stanford days, at Michigan, at San Francisco. And with Greg, whether he was at Buffalo or Baltimore, he's been an excellent coordinator in this league for a long time. I think he's a really good coach, and the run game has always been a staple and it's been tough to defend with all the different things they do. He's had different quarterbacks along the way that were mobile quarterbacks that could move. Herbert certainly can do it. They'll do it if they need him to do it, but he's a big, tall, strong guy that slings it around. He's got a bunch of skill guys that complement each other really well."

Q: You touched on Herbert. Has he taken his game to another level this season?

Daboll: "He's always been a good player. That's why he was picked where he was picked. He's got size. He's got athleticism. He's got instincts. He's got accuracy. He's got a strong arm. He uses his players well. He's just one heck of a quarterback."