Giants fans want to see how Russell Wilson changes the Giants’
The New York Giants offseason program is about to take the next step forward with the mandatory minicamp. And as the summer heats up, both literally and figuratively, several storylines will start to come into focus.
For this week’s survey we wanted to know which of the summer’s biggest storylines the Big Blue View community is most interested in seeing play out.
The results were pretty close, however there was a clear winner: How will the Giants’ offense change with Russell Wilson at quarterback.
It makes a lot of sense that the potential changes to the offense came out on top.
The change at quarterback to Russell Wilson represents a philosophical shift for the entire offense. The Giants have fielded a conservative, short-ranged offense over the last several years. There were flashes of explosiveness in games such as their 2023 win over the Arizona Cardinals and 2024 win over the Indianapolis Colts, but the offense was mostly predicated quick passes.
We’ve already gotten a glimpse of how the offense is shifting in OTAs with Jalin Hyatt seeming to take a step forward.
As noted in his “Make or Break” piece, Hyatt was an afterthought (at best) in the Giants’ offense last year. He ran 202 routes but was only targeted 19 times all year, and it was clear on tape that the vast majority of his routes were simply clear-outs to use his speed to create room for underneath passes. He may have been on the field and running routes, but likely wasn’t in the progression read.
That, however, seems to be changing with Wilson under center and Darius Slayton said earlier this week that Wilson wants to be aggressive throwing the ball.
“He wants to push the ball down the field and attack,” Slayton said. “So, if we’re in the huddle and we have a play and there’s certain plays where the ball is designed to go certain places and so in his head he might be in the huddle, be like, ‘hey, you got the post here but you’re not dead.’ Because a lot of times you might run a post corner, whatever, different concepts and the guy underneath always gets the ball, always gets the ball. So, you’re the guy running deep, you’re just running for the love. But he’ll be like, hey alert here, the safety drives, I’ll give it to you. And he’s done that multiple times over camp. So that’s kind of what I mean by okay, it gives you some like alright, you’re going to run anyways but it gives you a little extra juice of, I can really get the ball right here.”
Paulson Adebo also confirmed that how Wilson throws the deep pass, his “moon ball”, makes life easier for receivers and harder on defensive backs.
“He throws that thing high,” Adebo said. “So you really got to be able to get your head around and track it for a good bit of time. So sometimes it’s good for receivers.”
Operating further down the field tends to lead to more points. Not only does EPA (expected points averaged) tend to peak with passes targeted 10-15 yards downfield, the consistent threat of a deep pass should make the Giants’ offense harder to defend. Opponents will need to respect those clear-outs, because Wilson is willing to go off-script if they don’t. That should make the underneath passes more dangerous, as defenses won’t be able to simply play downhill suffocate the Giants’ offense.
The Giants’ defense is expected to be good after all of the investments made on that side of the ball this year. However, the team’s over-under is still set at 5.5 wins at FanDuel.com, and that is likely in large part due to questions about their offense.
The other storylines obviously still matter.
How Jaxson Dart develops is the biggest factor in the long term health and success of the team. Whether Evan Neal can successfully transition to guard could change the perception of Joe Schoen’s early work as GM and go a long way toward solidifying the offensive line for the foreseeable future. And obviously how Abdul Carter is incorporated into the front seven is going to be fascinating to watch.
But if the Giants are going to take the next step and be consistently competitive, it’s going to have to be driven by the offense.