It sounds simple when you say it boils down to three things, but it really isn’t
To have a 2025 season that doesn’t resemble last season’s 3-14 disaster, the New York Giants will need to have most of their offseason decisions be proven correct.
With that in mind, I thought it would be interesting to pull a recent question out of the Big Blue View mailbag and address some of those variables.
Doug Mollin asks: Chris had a very interesting take on Kayvon Thibodeaux recently, how he is “better than you think”.
This is another data point story of many this offseason that has me believing this team might really be better than a lot of people are assuming right now.
Will every variable break their way? Of course not. But enough might to make this a really interesting season.
What are your top three variables you’d want to break the Giants’ way this year? I’m going with:
- The OL coming together to play above average as a group.
- Bowen finding a way to get everything out a talented defensive group; top 5 potential.
- Tracy/Skattabo forming a dynamic duo at running back.
Valentine’s View
I think Doug is on the right track, but my three are somewhat different. Here they are:
The defense is what it is supposed to be
We keep hearing it, reading it, and maybe even feeding into the hype a bit ourselves here at Big Blue View. The Giants have one of the best defensive front sevens in football. They have so much talent that they should trade Kayvon Thibodeaux. Abdul Carter will be a superstar the second he steps on the field. The Giants should have a top 10 defense.
The Giants will need that defense to be better, probably much better, than it was a year ago when the Giants were 20th in the league in points allowed, giving up 24.4 per game.
The Giants added Carter and promising defensive tackle Darius Alexander in the draft. They beefed up a secondary that had just four interceptions last season by adding cornerback Paulson Adebo and safety Jevon Holland. They added versatile edge/defensive lineman Chauncey Golston, along with defensive tackles Roy Robertson-Harris and Jeremiah Ledbetter. They are expecting safety Tyler Nubin to take a Year 2 leap, and hoping linebacker Bobby Okereke rebounds from a disappointing, injury-shortened season.
The Giants will need to fill up their turnover chest to help the offense and have a chance to win a decent number of games against a schedule that promises to be difficult.
Defensive coordinator Shane Bowen will need to find the creativity to take advantage of the pieces he has been handed.
Co-owner John Mara was critical of last season’s defensive play, and Bowen knows he will face scrutiny as he tries to find the right roles for the array of talented players he has. Does he sense the pressure?
“I wouldn’t say pressure. I’m driven by the guys. My job is to get these guys ready to go out there to execute at the highest level, to maximize their potential, and to perform and ultimately win,” Bowen said. “So I’m driven by that. Come to work every day for them, doing everything I can to make them improve, to help them improve, to help our team improve.
“That’s really what fuels me. Don’t really feel the pressure of it. We’re working every day to improve right now. It’s still early. There is a lot of moving parts still that we’ll figure out and we’re figuring out each day how we’re going to make it work.”
One way or another, it has to work.
Their quarterback bet is proven right
No offense to Cam Skattebo, Marcus Mbow, James Hudson, Lil’Jordan Humphrey, or Zach Pascal, but the only truly significant moves the Giants made on offense this offseason were at quarterback.
“It’s the most important position in football,” GM Joe Schoen said back in January.
At the NFL Scouting Combine, Schoen said this:
“I think the quarterback elevates the rest of the roster. Yeah, absolutely. If you score more points, the defensive line can rush more. They’re not playing down seven, down 10, whatever it is where teams are in mixed downs or they can run the ball better, get leads. They can pin their ears back and get after it. It makes it a little bit easier on the defense.”
After the Giants dropped 45 points on the Indianapolis Colts in a Week 17 victory, head coach Brian Daboll was clear that quarterback play that day was a major factor.
“That’s how the offense needs to perform. That’s how the quarterback needs to perform,” Daboll said after Drew Lock had passed for 309 yards and four touchdowns. “So, when you do that and you win the turnover ratio, you have a chance to score points and win.
“I think if you get good quarterback play, you have an opportunity in every game.”
Other than quarterback, where Russell Wilson will start with veteran Jameis Winston backing him up and rookie first-round pick Jaxson Dart waiting for an inevitable call to action, Skattebo — as a rotational running back — is the only offensive newcomer expected to play regularly.
Does Wilson, with help from a vastly-improved — on paper — defense, still have enough left to push the Giants from last season’s 16.1 points per game to a middle-of-the-pack 22 or 23 ppg? If not, does the wildly erratic Winston have the ability to do that?
If they end up turning to him, what will the Giants get from Dart in his rookie season? Not every rookie quarterback begins his career the way C.J. Stroud of the Houston Texans or Jayden Daniels of the Washington Commanders did during the past two seasons. Some begin the way Eli Manning did in 2004, going 1-6 as a starter and completing an Anthony Richardson-esque 48.2% of his passes.
The Giants, with one of the worst offenses in football the past two seasons, have bet big that the quarterback was the problem. If they are going to be successful in 2025, they better be right.
Changing their fortunes in one-score games
The Giants were 1-8 in one-score games last season. In their surprising 2022 season, they went 9-4-1 in one-score games, including their Wild-Card victory over the Minnesota Vikings.
They have to be somewhere in the middle of those two numbers to have a chance at a decent 2025 season.
There are, of course, a ton of variables that go into winning or losing those close games.
- Quarterback play. We watched Daniel Jones miss chances at big plays and make devastating mistakes at crucial times last season. Wilson’s 32 fourth-quarter comeback victories are the ninth-most among quarterbacks since 1950.
- Offensive line play. The line has to give the quarterback and the skill position players a chance to make plays, rather than be a major reason why something bad happens. The health of Andrew Thomas will be a big factor here. Maybe, too, whether or not Evan Neal can transition to guard.
- Can the Giants run the ball well enough that their quarterbacks don’t need to carry the burden of winning games themselves?
- As referenced above, can the defense be what it is expected to be? If the offense is league average, that will be a major improvement. If the defense is above league average, or well above league average, that should translate into opportunities to win games.
- Can they rely on their kicking game? The direct question is, can they still rely on 37-year-old Graham Gano to make big kicks, especially from distance, after two injury-plagued seasons?
Submit a question
This is the second time over the past few days that we have pulled a question from the mailbag to create a front-page post. The other was about Russell Wilson and the Giants’ offensive personnel.
Have a Giants-related question of your own? E-mail it to bigblueview@gmail.com and it might be featured in our weekly mailbag.