It is safe to assume that the New York Giants are frustrated by the drama between quarterback Jaxson Dart and linebacker Abdul Carter. The heat of the backlash from fans also got to former running back and Super Bowl champion Brandon Jacobs, who did not hold back on his feelings. It’s now time to move on.

“Me and my teammates ain’t give a s–t about what religion or what political side one represents. Line that s–t up let’s hit some folks in the mouth!!” Jacobs posted on X.

The New York Giants had done a good job of generating buzz around the team’s new look and energy, courtesy of the team hiring John Harbaugh as their head coach this year. But after Jaxson Dart shared the stage with Donald Trump at a rally, the topic became all that fans could talk about. The situation flared up with Abdul Carter’s apparent disappointment in his teammate, who also called him out on social media.

“Thought this s–t was AI, what we doing man,” he wrote on X.

There were widespread theories around Dart’s political ideologies, and a potentially uneasy environment in the Giants’ diverse locker room. He had to address the situation in a team meeting to help the franchise brave this unexpected storm.

Carter and Dart have since confirmed that there is no bad blood between them. During a media availability on May 29, the two players gave each other a quick hug while they gave their statements. Dart said that Carter was a “brother,” while the linebacker said that everything was okay as long as he got to “stand his ground.”

“I sit next to Jaxson every day – we’re close, we talk,” Carter added. “As long as we make sure we have the same goal as a team, and our goals align – which they do -that’s all that matters. I just want to move past this.”

Insider Ian Rapoport also revealed that veterans Kayvon Thibodeaux, Brian Burns, and Jameis Winston had also spoken during this team meeting, presumably urging the team to move on from this and focus on the season ahead. After all, the franchise is trying to recalibrate after finishing 4-13 last season.

A controversy like this has the potential to upend those plans. That is why, more than ever, the team needed to band together in its aftermath,

“We’ve got a blond-haired, blue-eyed white kid and a Black Muslim religion, Black kid, who are coming together and showing y’all, showing the world that we can come together,” Winston said in the same press conference.

This experience had been an important test for the Giants, which Harbaugh thought was much-needed.

John Harbaugh viewed the controversy as a learning opportunity

“It was really a good opportunity for us as a football team to have these kind of conversations around a real life incident,” Harbaugh told the press. “The important thing to understand is we are a collection of all of us together. There’s a lot of ways to communicate. There’s a lot of ways to talk. And there’s a lot of ways to do things better, certainly, going forward. I’m sure we all learned. And that’s a good thing.”

However, Harbaugh saw no problem in Jaxson Dart interacting with a political entity as big as Donald Trump, by choice.

“It’s not a judgment type of a thing. There’s nothing to be judged.”

More than anyone, Harbaugh needs this controversy to die down. The Giants helped sustain his career as a head coach after he was fired by the Baltimore Ravens, where he worked for 18 seasons. He came to a franchise that needed to be jump-started with the right kind of attitude and strategy. And until this controversy, Harbaugh was clearly making a difference.

Now that the Giants have presented a united front for the world to see, we will have to wait for the season to find out if the team has truly turned a page over this messy chapter.