| Projected Record*: | 9-8 (1-3 in 2023) |
| Weighted DVOA Offense (2022)*: | 7th |
| Weighted DVOA Defense (2022): | 29th |
| Early Down DVOA (2022): | 1st Down – 16th, 2nd Down – 2nd |
| Explosive Play Rate (2022)*: | Offense – 28th (Run 6th, Pass 32nd), Defense – 27th (Run 32nd, Pass 14th) |
| Key Additions: | Parris Campbell WR, Cole Beasley WR, Darren Waller TE, Rakeem Nunez-Roches DI, A’Shawn Robinson DI, Bobby Okereke LB, Bobby McCain DB, Amani Oruwariye CB, Isaiah Simmons S |
| Key Departures: | Richie James WR, Kenny Golladay WR, Nick Gates IOL, Jon Feliciano IOL, Justin Ellis DI, Nick Williams DI, Jaylon Smith LB, Reggie Ragland LB, Fabian Moreau CB, Tony Jefferson S, Julian Love S, Landon Collins S |
| Rookies to Watch: | Jalin Hyatt WR, John Michael Schmitz IOL, Deonte Banks CB |
Injury Report
Quarterback
Daniel Jones finally made his money! The former first-round pick has spent most of his career as a punchline: turnover-prone, over-drafted, and a somewhat misshapen fit for his team. Has he been bad? Undoubtedly, he has not been good. Jones peaked in 2022 as the 17th highest graded NFL QB by PFF*, just ahead of his 2020 grade of 18th. It isn’t a particularly exciting ceiling, but there are worse things than a QB better than half the league. In the other two seasons (2019 and 2021), Jones ranked 26th and 22nd respectively. His teams were certainly bad. The Giants have had a positive point differential (outscoring other teams) just twice since 2012, which includes 2016 (Eli Manning riding with a defense that was 2nd in the league in points allowed) and 2012 (the year after the Super Bowl, in which the Giants did not even make the playoffs). Jones plays a role, sure, but in 2019 through 2021, the team went 14-35 with a crumbling defense, injuries abound, and two talented rosters in the division in the Eagles and Cowboys. Brian Daboll’s hiring was meant to signal that it was time to see what the team had in Jones, who had spent those seasons running for his life. Running, incidentally, is one of Jones’s real talents: last year, Jones picked up 805 yards on the ground, just 3 yards behind Josh Allen. He doesn’t really force you to miss tackles (12, compared to Allen’s 27, Jalen Hurts’s 32, and Lamar Jackson’s 34 in 12 games lol wut how is Lamar so good?!) but that kind of makes the sheer yardage all the more impressive, especially when his yards per attempt ranked in the top 10. Jones excels at finding space and using his foot speed to get every inch he can. He’s your classic flag football league QB, choosing a direction, scrambling on the three-one-thousand, and getting there as quickly as possible. That quality extended to his passing in 2022, as well, which led PFF to grade him in the 95th percentile in avoiding negatively graded plays*. Last season was finally the time in which those good running decisions linked with good passing decisions: his long-term contract makes some sense when you consider how consistently Jones delivered plays that were on-time and broke structure at the right junctures. Any coach would look at those qualities and feel like their Brilliant System will be run to fidelity. In 2022, Brian Daboll’s coaching helped unearth another tool: Jones had top 10 statistics against the blitz, including passer rating (9th), completion percentage (3rd), and EPA/play* (6th). Blitzing Daniel Jones to create turnovers was no longer a wise option, which meant that run blitzes also might prove problematic, giving the whole offense room to work. There is a team-wide lift when a QB can force a defense to stay more conservative. Brian Daboll might not have unlocked a potential superstar, but he did unlock a guy that can captain a balanced offense with some extra fireworks in the run game; his best version might be a mobile Jimmy Garoppolo.
That’s where the positives end for Jones, who is mediocre for a reason and has been terrible in 2023. Daniel Jones limits the modern offense in some key ways, and those specific limitations give serious pause to the notion that he will ever be a top 10 football player. For one, Jones is not nearly aggressive enough down the football field. His aDOT*, both pressured and not pressured, was 32nd in the league in 2022. It has continued this year, with last Monday setting a new personal low as the Giants ATTEMPTED 2 PASSES ten yards or more down the field. In the year of our lord 2023. That’s not simply a Daboll problem: in 2021 under Joe Judge, Jones ranked only above Ben Roethlisberger and Jared Goff in average depth of target. Okay, so there’s nothing wrong with being a pocket passer punishing conservative defenses (after all, Patrick Mahomes was 34th in aDOT in 2021), but Jones’s rushing ability becomes so much less potent if he cannot punish defenses for overcommitting to his run threat. To illustrate how bad this is for Jones, I want to now present a sentence I wrote verbatim in the first draft of these previews in June of 2023: “What’s to stop defenses from immediately compressing on a Jones scramble to knock short routes off course and come speeding downhill at the high-running QB?” Sitting down to edit today, I’m struck by how much that sentence has proven true this year. Defenses are sitting on, and jumping, routes, to the tune of game-ending INTs in two primetime blowouts. They’re setting up lawn chairs in between Jones and the sticks, and moving only to go light him up the minute he steps up. Seattle had 11 sacks on Monday (!!) and 6 were from non-defensive lineman (3 of the 4 knockdowns were also non-DL). That doesn’t even count the licks Jones took on his 10 rushing attempts. Why would you respect the passing game at all if the QB won’t push you deep and he doesn’t have the command of either the field or his own accuracy to punish your delayed rush? Josh Allen and Mahomes (at least before teams started exclusively playing back against Mahomes) invite pressure for a reason, launching the ball from awkward arm angles with precision to punish defenses, but Jones just YOLOs out to the side and dumps off if he has to. The misshapen skill set comes into play here: what’s the use of being deceptively athletic if you lack versatility? In addition to the lack of playmaking ability down the field out of structure, Jones is not challenging defenses in vulnerable areas down the field within structure either. The Giants’ target heat map* was a sea of blue up the seams: Jones targeted the deep outside at a far less significant rate than other QBs in the league. When you see that kind of thing, the immediate thought is that the QB does not have the arm. Even the new Deep Ball Tua has that issue, as his deep heat map for targets also looks blue above 10 yards up the sideline. Jones’s issues with arm strength, like Tua, might be somewhat overblown (the guy made the NFL after all and has a healthy arm), but if he can make all the throws, he isn’t. Teams will find a way to force Jones to do things he doesn’t want to do and, once they do, can Jones implement the improvisation and moxie needed to counter? PFF accuracy charting put Jones at well below average throwing behind his receivers in 2022, suggesting that he can be late on passes. That’s not a promising sign for his ability to read defenses. His passer rating was highest (in the top 10, to be clear) targeting TEs and slot WRs: if I were a defensive coordinator, I’d man up and absolutely clog the middle of the football field this year (again, a sentence I wrote in 2022 and is the way defenses have demolished Jones). To make that defensive strategy even more obvious, the additions to the receiving corps were more slot weapons and Darren Waller. The Giants are attempting to double down on what Jones did well, but teams adjusted quicker than they could handle. Jones has never been a part of a real contender going back to his college days at Duke (yes, the Giants won a playoff game in 2022 in which he played well, but it’s a 2 game playoff sample size and the other game against the Eagles was a nightmare), and the stuff that separates contenders from outliers is the ability to stay a step ahead. Jones will need to step up his game in terms of creativity and aggression to keep pace with the league, and will be one of the most fascinating players to watch this year as a result. The early returns have been a sheer nightmare: Jones has 2 big time throws* to an absurd 8 turnover worthy plays*, which puts him at 1 in 20 of his passes graded as turnover worthy according to PFF. Yikes! As you can imagine, that’s good for one of the worst rates in the league, behind just Desmond Ridder (whose Pixar Pick 6 will be legend in Andy’s Room), Mac Jones (whose biggest play of the year was a nut tap), and Bryce Young (who is young and looks like the little kid from Rookie Of The Year in his uniform right now). Teams have Jones figured out, and the counterpunch will need to come fast.
Coaching
Last year, I wrote about what Brian Daboll’s departure meant to the Bills, saying, “Much will be made of who made who with Allen and Daboll: the offense was deeply subpar in Allen’s first two years, ranking in the bottom half for efficiency, only to skyrocket when Allen’s personal training revolutionized his accuracy. But Daboll himself also became known for incredibly aggressive play calls, eschewing the run in short yardage and early-down situations.” In the end, not too much was made because both men, at this point, made themselves. Even as Allen showed few signs of slowing down without the offensive coordinator who propelled him into stardom, Daboll himself made the playoffs and did a lot with a little in Daniel Jones. The Giants, with no receiving corps to speak of and a QB who had never taken a real step past a bottom-ten caliber starter, achieved the 7th best offense by weighted DVOA. That number breaks down to the 7th best run game (one of just 12 to add efficiency to the offense on the ground) and the 10th best pass game. If you looked at the raw numbers and ignored the jersey color/roster names, you might be fooled into thinking you were watching the Cowboys’ (13th in pass, 10th in run) well-balanced, star-driven machine with a steady hand at QB. But Daniel Jones is not a steady hand by any stretch: despite attempting 100 more passes, Jones tied his big time throws from last year with just 7, a dismal 1.4% mark that ranked 2nd lowest in the league (just in front of Matt Ryan). And he still had a bottom 10 turnover worthy play mark among starters, with 19 such plays. That…is not a good QB. And yet Daboll threw and threw, even with an elite RB, with Jones attempting the 14th most passes in the league. Bad teams like the Giants typically lean on their run game, especially with that elite RB being on a contract year. But Saquon Barkley also got his, ending 4th in rushing attempts and 5th in yards after contact. Their average drive lasted 2:55*, good for 8th in the league; the team capitalized on a short game coupled with a run game that created just enough efficiency to win games and keep the ball. While they ended 9-7-1 before making the playoffs, their staggering 7-3 start to the season was a masterclass in keeping your cool. They went 6-1 in their first 7 games, each decided by one score or less. They only played 4 games in the regular season in which the gap was more than one score. Giants fans lived on the edge in 2022. In the playoffs, they managed to get one more one-score win over the flailing Vikings before meeting the Eagles buzzsaw the next week. Overall, Daboll’s first year as a head coach at any level was a marked success. They were the 4th best team in rushing yards despite passing plenty, and managed to stay aggressive without throwing the game away (their 6 INTs were best in the league offensively). The team signed back Daniel Jones and franchise tagged Saquon Barkley, allowing Daboll to keep his personnel and his coaching staff largely intact, with Jeff Nixon replacing the departing DeAndre Smith as RB coach. This year, however, the tables have turned. In a gnarly win against the undermanned Arizona Cardinals, Barkley injured his ankle and sat out the last two weeks. Without him, and with the problems in the pass game described in the previous section, the Giants have the worst DVOA in football, weighed down by the worst offensive DVOA I’ve seen in years. No numbers could adequately describe the pain I feel sitting down to watch Giants football. Outside of one inspired half against the Cardinals, they’re attempting to dink and dunk down the field against some of the best defenses in the league who are clued in to both the dinking and dunking. The Cowboys and 49ers did Cowboys and 49ers things to the poorly-prepared Giants team, but the Seahawks did the most damage I’ve seen in a long time. Despite investing first-round picks and hundreds of millions into the offensive line, Jones can barely hit the top of his drops before he sees pressure, and his receivers are blanketed. It’s like watching someone play Madden against a defense on top difficulty, and the someone in question is a 7-year-old’s pet gerbil. Are there any answers? Outside of teaching your conservative and slow-processing QB to recklessly launch the ball downfield, there sure don’t seem to be. Even if Saquon Barkley returns, schedule Giants games for naptime and catch the highlights later: win or lose, the most offensive thing will always be a boring product. Brian Daboll has gone from Coach of the Year winner to a potential Year 3 firing in record time.
Defensively, the Giants hired Wink Martindale in 2022 after his falling out with John Harbaugh in Baltimore, and became the newest team familiar with his blitz-happy ways. The Giants blitzed on 39.7% of plays in 2022, which is essentially self-parody for Wink, as no other team crossed 35%. He’d make Josh Boyer and Brian Flores blush. The team managed the 8th most pressures according to Pro Football Reference and prevented TDs at a top 10 rate, but the scheme had many drawbacks. First, the pressures were mostly made by players along the defensive line, mitigating the effectiveness of the blitz; at that point, you’re drawing players out of coverage for no particularly good reason if the guys getting immediately blocked are the ones making it to the QB. An argument could be made that the blitzers are scheming the rushers open, but considering the first-round talent pedigree of the rushers (Kayvon Thibideaux, Dexter Lawrence, and Leonard Williams), it’s hard to believe the Giants couldn’t get pressure without the risk of a blitz. The Giants allowed the 6th most rushing yards, the 3rd most yards per attempt on carries, and that’s a real problem for an aggressive defense to overcome. For one, your division rivals in the Eagles will absolutely kill you every time you play. The Giants will double down on this scheme as well, replacing just the safeties coach, and hope that the growth of young players will solve some schematic issues. As much as I love aggression, this team needs to establish a baseline of defensive play to take the next step. As I will detail below, the personnel inspire plenty of worry that individual players will allow for less risk-taking. Brian Daboll and Wink Martindale are two aggressive coaches who zig toward attack while others zag toward efficiency. This creates a volatile team, 3rd in DVOA efficiency variance over the course of the year (teams in the top 5 like Washington, Baltimore, and Seattle oscillated between playoff-level performances from units and disgusting dropoff). Can Daboll and Martindale build a well-coached squad and catch this high end of variance? 2023 will be a major test, and the Giants are a prime candidate to regress if the ball bounces the other way. Sure enough, the defense has regressed badly, with atrocious tackling, the same bad run fits, and abysmal coverage. A decent pass rush has not saved them, and Wink is another formerly good coach roaming the sidelines apparently out of answers. Poor personnel decisions, scheme fits, and game plans are only compounding the issue. You know you’re in Hell when your bottom-7 defense has far more production than your bottom-1 offense. Neither coach could have imagined that daily meetings with some dipshit from the New York Post publishing a column sandwiched between Crime Porn would be worse this year.
Offense
It’s always fun to steal a playoff game. The New York Giants got to do just that last year on the backs of a stellar offensive output, scoring 31 against the Vikings and putting an emphatic statement on the idea that their surprising season was not a fluke. Ultimately, though, the team played like any we might identify with a fluke: some players ascended to real stardom, with outlier seasons that propelled the Giants offense, while other positions were papered over with some nice floral wallpaper. The offensive line is the perfect encapsulation of this idea: Andrew Thomas and Mark Glowinski on the positive side, Ben Bredeson and Evan Neal on the negative. First, Thomas: Andrew Thomas was stellar as a pass blocker this year, an actual immovable wall after rebuilding his technique as a first round bust. Only Trent Williams and Christian Darrisaw (GREAT players) graded higher by PFF grading, and his 23 pressures allowed* on well over 1000 snaps was good for 8th best percentage in the league. Thomas is still growing as a run blocker, but if he ends up being Laremy Tunsil (above average run blocker with plenty of want-to, elite pass protector) then he’s a home run pick. Thomas was hurt in Week 1 and has been replaced by Joshua Ezeudu, who played a fine game against the Cardinals in Week 2 but imploded over the next two weeks, with 8 pressures allowed. He will likely suit up against Miami. Mark Glowinski is the opposite of Thomas, but still offers plenty of what you want: his 37 pressures allowed weren’t ideal, but consistent with his long-term profile (he actually had more on 300 less snaps in Indy), while his run blocking was totally solid. He’s good at both gap and zone schemes, rating above average in both by PFF metrics. This year, like so much of the Giants team, he has had a steep regression: Glowinski allowed NINE pressures in the Dallas game Week 1 and has now been shuffled in and out of the lineup. He has not brought nearly as much positive production in the run game. So the good? Not so good. Then there are the problems: Evan Neal, the first round pick last year, was absolutely awful in a move to right tackle. He was PFF’s worst rated pass blocker and allowed 52 pressures, good for 3rd most. That’s all the more disastrous because the top 2 (Orlando Brown Jr. and Andrew Wylie) had 843 and 816 pass blocking opportunities respectively to Neal’s 503. As a run blocker, he was only 5th worst, I guess, but the guys worse than him (Duane Brown, Donovan Smith, and Jawaan Taylor most notably) are great pass protectors. So he offers some of the worst pass protection in the league and blocks with the temerity of a pass block specialist. Yikes. Only his first round pedigree offers him another shot. The motivation for the Giants to give him that shot is waning: Neal called fans burger-flippers who should not be commenting on his performance, which he has already apologized for twice as of press time Thursday. He’s on pace now to allow 80 pressures, so bad he’s actually dangerous. The other problem is LG, where Ben Bredeson also graded below average by PFF metrics. Not quite a disaster (only 12 pressures), Bredeson offered little value from a physical standpoint in support of the interior line, and his run blocking limited opportunities for the rest of the line. Bredeson also was sent to the bench, rotating back in with Glowinski, but was forced into action as the center due to another injury and played his worst game of the season. The hope for any one-year-wonder candidate is an infusion of rookie talent, and the Giants have hope there with new center John Michael Schmitz, a 2nd rounder out of Minnesota. Schmitz was, according to PFF, often protected in the pass game by a quick scheme in college, but received large praise throughout camp for his consistency, movement skills in zone blocking, and quick leadership across the line. Schmitz has the makings of a hard-nosed, long-term starter if he has the athleticism to keep up. His early returns have been mixed, with poor games against the Cowboys and 49ers and quality games against the Cardinals and Seahawks before his injury. While you’d love to see more consistency, life as a rookie against two of the best defenses in the NFL is bound to be hard. He has yet to practice off of that injury against the Seahawks, and will likely be deemed week-to-week. Shane Lemieux, who was called into action after the Week 1 debacle, is (say it with me) injured, and also not practicing.
The skill positions are equally chaotic in New York, this time with Darren Waller, Saquon Barkley in the positive column, and general intrigue through the rest of the lineup. Barkley finally stabilized the injury issues that have plagued him since his rookie season, staying healthy in 2022. He set a career high in snaps and carries, playing in 16 games (missing one for veteran rest after the team clinched playoff position) and finally getting a top-tier receiving load again. Brian Daboll was certainly familiar with the star’s injury history, but the new start was a gamechanger for Barkley’s usage. While he has given up some explosiveness to those frequent early injuries, Barkley is still a weapon that concerns defenses. This year, fresh off of a healthy one, is a perfect year to convince the league that he can still create. Barkley was somewhat reliant on good blocking this year, and PFF had him right in the middle of the pack when it came to missed tackles (41, just two more than Raheem Mostert on twice as many carries). Unfortunately, he is injured again with a high ankle sprain, currently a limited participant after a strong start to the season. Darren Waller comes over via trade to be the new best-proven receiving threat on the Giants. Waller is a classic WR-turned-TE, with no ability to run block to speak of. He is far from the league-altering talent he demonstrated in 2020, and missed 8 games last season due to injury, but this is still a guy who creates mismatches in the seam. With Josh McDaniels last season, Waller set a new career high in yards-per-catch, but a career low in yards after catch. Even if some of the athleticism is depleted, Waller is different than other receiving threats in that he spent most of his time in past seasons playing in-line TE. Daboll would be wise to continue that trend. Waller has not been used nearly enough by Daniel Jones and/or Brian Daboll (I’d guess Jones because Daboll was filmed launching a tablet near his QB after Jones missed Waller wide open in the endzone) but he has performed fine when he has been targeted. Outside of those two positions, WR is a strange collection of talented guys, one of whom must emerge this season. Of the candidates, the most interesting is Isaiah Hodgins, who was waived by the Bills after Ken Dorsey could not find a way to utilize him in games. Hodgins was claimed by the Giants and cracked the starting lineup within the next few weeks. The numbers aren’t eye-popping (46 catches for 500 yards and 5 TDs) but Hodgins is a Daboll guy who is perfect for the offense. He has great size at 6’4” 209 pounds, and is surprisingly good at weaving through traffic for a long-strider. Jones has a 116 passer rating when targeting* Hodges, and he should get more looks over the coming weeks. The consistent Darius Slayton will certainly get his chance to show more than the league-average play he has demonstrated through his first four seasons in the NFL: Daboll finally got Slayton into space last year and he responded with a stellar 6.1 yards after catch average to the tune of a career high 816 yards. He’s third on the team in targets, though he has just .93 yards per route run*, a true oof number. Parris Campbell, Wan’Dale Robinson, Jalin Hyatt and Sterling Shepard make up the rest of the deep unit, with Robinson the most interesting of the bunch, especially after Week 4, where he had the most targets on the team. He was an obscenely good route running weapon in college and looked to be breaking out, with 9 catches for 100 yards in the final full game before an ACL tear ended his season. Robinson is a bit of a gadget player, solid on jet sweeps and specializing in the over post route that Hill and Waddle feasted on last year. He has yet to do much of that, as the team will not throw deep under any circumstances. When they do, Jalin Hyatt is typically the target. Hyatt has just four catches on the year, but two of them against Arizona went for 89 yards total, both over 30 yards. You would love to see more of this! Brian Daboll made the choice to run back an inconsistent unit from last year, and right now, he is paying the price: the Giants look undermanned from an injury standpoint and under-talented to boot.
Defense
There’s no sugar-coating anything, this was a terrible defense last year and the additions to the team feel like an admission that this fix will take more than one year. The Giants are working desperately to keep anything resembling talent on the football team through 2025, when this team may actually have a shot at more than a wild card berth. This aim for competence two years out may also be the time when the young defensive line makes the transition from talented young promise to tangible All-Pro success. The hopes of the Giants hinge on big production from Kayvon Thibodeaux, who did just fine in his rookie season. That shouldn’t be seen as condescension: doing everything just fine as a rookie on 800+ snaps is genuinely an achievement. While Thibodeaux only had one special game as a pass rusher in 2022 (beating the Cowboys like a drum for 9 pressures), he had 8 games with 3 or more pressures. He had his first game above 3 pressures (4 to be precise) against Seattle last week, getting in on two sacks. He played the entire year at one position, as a true edge, and future years may see him flexing his versatility as he has excellent play strength and plays stout against the run: his 29 stops* were 22nd in the league during a year where the Giants had the worst run defense DVOA in the league. This particular mystery, why the Giants were otherworldly terrible at stopping the run, somewhat eludes me because this is a good interior defensive line! The Giants brought a Brinks truck to keep Dexter Lawrence around, who showcased that progression from Good to All-Pro in year 4: PFF rated the nose as the second best interior lineman behind Chris Jones and AHEAD of Aaron Donald! An incredible pass rusher from the middle, Lawrence is a true disrupter in all phases with 70 pressures (#2) and 42 run stops (#7, Wilkins had #1 and Sieler #3 btw lol) in 2022. He’s still stellar, and leads the team with 17 pressures in 4 games The other two members of the defensive interior are strong too! Leonard Williams may not have blossomed into the perennial All-Pro the team hoped for when they took him top 10, but he’s a top quarter of the league interior lineman who probably only missed the Pro Bowl because his play tailed off after a stinger in Week 13 that he played through. This year, he’s back to that top tier play with 10 pressures, 4 each against the Cardinals and 49ers. A’Shawn Robinson offers plenty of value as a 3-4 end, and he was brought in to be the last piece for a great run-defending defensive line from the Rams. His last two years, he played the position admirably as a rotational piece and should not be asked to give more than 500 snaps. He has yet to do much, but the overall defense is so bad that it’s hard to pin run struggles on a lack of contributions from Robinson. The final defensive line piece is Azeez Ojulari, yet another high pick on the line, who has below average PFF metrics but does fine in counting stats, with 13.5 sacks in 26 career games. Neither Jihad Ward nor Boogie Basham played well filling in for Ojulari, but Ojulari returned from an injury last week, so hopefully neither will see the field much going forward.
Linebacker is where the Giants hope that they can solve a leaky defense, and secondary is where you can say with certainty that they’re still a few years away from a unit that looks passable. First, linebacker: the disaster of last year cannot be overstated, even as the team sought to rebuild from 2021. Tae Crowder was one of the worst starters in the league: he allowed 278 yards after catches* in his zones and scored the 187th worst run defense grade from PFF out of 195. He was benched in week 10 in a reshuffling, and then cut and added to the practice squad AFTER STARTING TEN GAMES! Shades of Phillip Wheeler! Jaylon Smith, an injury reclamation project, steadied the ship somewhat and earned a second year, but is now a free agent after he looked limited by his college injury. Jarrad Davis, perhaps the only NFL player who could make Crowder look passable, was added but could not crack the starting lineup, and is now injured for the foreseeable future. Instead, the Giants went to 5th-round rookie Micah McFadden who was…also bad, allowing 22 of 27 passes in his area* to be caught. 195 of the 269 yards came after the catch. Yeesh. So, in comes Bobby Okereke, who actually seemed to be able to navigate a run fit, and he was overpaid for a skill the Giants desperately need. Like most LBs, Okereke had an up-and-down first four years, but he tackles with volume and ferocity, though his 6 missed tackles is too high for a LB of his pay grade. Davis and McFadden were set to compete next to him, but following an injury to Davis in the Summer, the team traded a late round pick for Isaiah Simmons, a former 1st round pick hybrid safety in Arizona. Shockingly, this has gone well! Less shockingly, he barely plays. Simmons has yet to miss a tackle and tends to contribute from the middle of the defense in base packages. It’s similarly slim pickings out at the secondary. Xavier McKinney had his worst year yet, even before he broke his hand in a bye week ATV accident: he allowed 12.2 yards per catch, twice as much as his rookie season. At the other safety, Jason Pinnock looked similarly lost, allowing 161 yards on NINE CATCHES last year, for an average of 17.9 yards per catch. He makes everyone look like Waddle, apparently. Darnay Holmes was one of PFF’s most hated slot corners. In 2022, he received nine penalties while providing precious little value. Instead of sticking with him, the Giants have started playing CB Adoree Jackson in the slot instead of the boundary. Jackson has previously been a steady piece, though injuries each year have held him back from the All-Pro promise he showed in his rookie year. After 2100 snaps in his first two years, Jackson has yet to play more than 815 in a year, but was a guarantee to allow a passer rating of less than 100 on the boundary and might be one of the best man CBs in the league (5th highest rate of man run in 2022, 72 passer rating allowed). That man skill led the Giants to believe Jackson could kick inside, but he’s been terrible. Jackson has allowed 16 catches for 236 yards and a TD. This decision may prove to be one of the worst that any coach will make in terms of personnel for the year. Daboll’s team hopes the addition of athletic freak Deonte Banks in the first round can be an immediate win for them: Banks was a surefire first rounder, seen by many as the top of the second tier of corners. He’s been described as somewhat raw, but at 6’0” 197 and with a 4.35 in the 40 yard dash, this kid will be a problem in one-on-one man coverage. Meanwhile, the Giants have chosen to play another rookie on the boundary when Jackson kicks inside: Tre Hawkins III from Old Dominion was drafted in the 6th-round of the 2023 Draft, and he has yet to provide consistent coverage. Teams will target him more as the year goes on. Hope comes from the ascending line and Deonte Banks: from there, it’s anyone’s guess as to who will still be around at this time next year.
Special Teams
Graham Gano was a steady kicker in 2022, finishing tied for the 2nd best PFF grade among all qualifiers last year and, after two uncharacteristic misses in the element during Week 1, he’s been perfect. He hit 37 of 39 extra points and 30 of 33 FG attempts in 2022, including a stunning 8/9 from 50 and above. He’s one of the best in the game right now, and one of the longest tenured at 36 years old. Gano is a great athlete at that, a star track and field runner in Florida during high school, and in 2018, he actually beat the Giants with the Carolina Panthers when he blasted a 63-yarder tied for third longest in NFL history. Punter Jamie Gillan has a Scottish accent because he is from Scotland, which is adorable and confusing. He actually never updated his visa from a NATO visa from his Royal Air Force father to a work visa, and got stuck in London last year when returning with the Giants. His nickname is the Scottish Hammer. He is good at punting, ranking between 10th and 20th in every major category outside of hangtime, where he ranked 5th. The Giants had the 22nd ranked special teams by DVOA, largely due to a poor return game, where Richie James became the poster boy after fumbling two punts in the same game against Seattle. Adoree Jackson may have to handle the punt returns for the first time since his rookie season after Eric Gray had one of the worst muffed punts I’ve ever seen live last week. Gray was the kick returner, but has yet to return one for more than even 20 yards. Nick McCloud is a mediocre special teams Ace, and will return with a potential role addition in defensive sub packages.
Game Prediction
Talk about a Get-Right Game. The Dolphins, after a week of play that was not nearly good enough for the team’s aspirations, are getting healthier at the right time. The team that went toe-to-toe with the Chargers for the whole 60 minutes is mostly back, with Jaelan Phillips and Connor Williams set to suit up and give a boost to the lines. Terron Armstead goes to injured reserve, making the Kendall Lamm experiment a more permanent enterprise. Lamm will square off against a good defensive line, and it won’t be surprising if the Giants boss the Dolphins around a bit upfront. But, with two struggling rookie corners and a veteran playing far below his level on the outside (none of which are willing tacklers), the perimeter is wide open for a team that wants to get out there anyway. There’s simply no excuse for putting up less than 30 points. And, if that’s the case, one of the league’s least interesting and most haunted offenses will struggle to keep pace. Yes, Daniel Jones has struggled mightily, but he’s a Pro Bowler compared to the rotating cast of characters staffing his offensive line and receiving corps. Not even Saquon Barkley is enough to make me believe the Giants can score 30 without major Miami mistakes.
Last week was a let-down, and there’s not much to say other than falling short on the measuring stick is a humbling experience for a team fighting to stay as even-keeled as their Head Coach. It was nice to see a confident Tua Tagovailoa call the team to action, secure as he is as the face of the team. It’s a far cry from the quiet Tua we saw in previous losses, trying to avoid the cascade of negativity from fans and media. This is a new Dolphins team, one that has already proven to be as resilient as last year, and confident, outspoken players help lend fans the confidence to let the past be the past. One intriguing note that is less positive: players who have spent a lot of time in Miami’s system are already rumbling about some of Vic Fangio’s matchup decisions. Xavien Howard bristled at the notion that he could not shadow Stefon Diggs (and let’s be clear, he absolutely cannot), and dropped a profane “Y’all know who I am” to boot. Fangio, the elderly tinkerer that he is, has put some experiments on the field that have been somewhat concerning. Brandon Jones was atrocious in his first game back from injury, so much so that rust can’t totally explain the disaster. Andrew Van Ginkel’s move to LB seems to be mercifully over, but that it ever happened is somewhat confusing, as all previous tape dating back to college suggested that he lacks some of the instincts needed for the position. Against two direly bad offenses in the next two weeks, such tinkering is Taylor-Approved, but this team needs answers before a tough matchup on the road against Philadelphia’s A.J. Brown. Some sack production would be nice, especially against a certified rotten offensive line.
Miami is favored by double digits by Vegas for a reason: Mike McDaniel’s team has laid waste to opponents at home, where the defense has traditionally offered a bit more toward the offense. They are 7-2 at home in the McDaniel Era. As such, there are precious few learnings we can glean from a commanding Miami win. Here’s what I’ll be watching:
- Will Miami’s offensive line be bullied against a good Giants defensive line? They have struggled to get pressure, but the physical talent is excellent. If the game is a lower-scoring affair, it will likely be because the stout line upfront put Miami behind the chains.
- Can the secondary hold up long enough for the defense to create their own havoc? A worst-case scenario involves Jones with enough time to deliver intermediate passes that keep the Giants alive, which is what happened when they beat the Cardinals. Miami’s offense plays a role here too: put the Giants in a hole and you have a lot less to worry about.
- Is Saquon Barkley healthy? The Dolphins struggled mightily against Austin Ekeler, who shares Barkley’s pedigree as a multi-dimensional threat. It would be encouraging to see him limited, though a bunch of empty yards in garbage time is not the worst thing.
- How good is Da’Von Achane? He has another chance to continue a shocking rookie of the year campaign after he was Miami’s clear Week 4 offensive MVP. Achane may be the third threat Miami needs behind Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle, and a third week of stellar play in a row would be a real arrival.
Miami has a chance to get fans excited again, as this game will mark the official end of the first quarter of the season. I expect them to dominate against a banged-up and inferior opponent. A win is a win, even if there is little to learn from it, especially in the race for the division and a top seed in the AFC. With both teams 3-1, we’ve also started Bills Watch 2023: the Bills will face the Jaguars, who are in London already, in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Both teams should hold steady this week.
Game Prediction: Dolphins 31-13
Season Record (Taylor Picks): 3-1
NEXT WEEK: Carolina Panthers
* = See Glossary
