Since 2016, when the end of the Tom Coughlin era began, the New York Giants have had six different head coaches (including interims), four primary quarterbacks, all kinds of different coordinators, and no overriding philosophy beyond President/CEO/Owner John Mara insisting at the end of every season that things need to be better in the upcoming year.
Which hasn’t happened often enough. The post-Coughlin Giants have had two winning seasons — 2016 and 2022 — and overall in the last decade, their 55-109-1
record and .336 winning percentage is the NFL’s second-worst, ahead of only the New York Jets.
Gotham football, everybody!
In any event, the Giants fired head coach Brian Daboll last November after a 2-8 start to an eventual 4-13 finish, and interim head coach Mike Kafka was set aside in favor of longtime Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh. Jim’s older brother put up a 180-113 regular-season record in 18 years with the Ravens, with a 13-11 postseason record and a victory in Super Bowl XLVII over Jim’s San Francisco 49ers. In this regard, Harbaugh would seem to bring more stability than any Giants head coach in a long time, because the Ravens have been one of the NFL’s bastions of continued success in this millennium.
Harbaugh knows that he’s in for a bit of a rebuild, but he’s also been conditioned to expect a certain level of success and improvement over time.
“It’s a profound honor to be entrusted with the responsibility of coaching the New York Football Giants — one of the most iconic franchises in all of sports,” Harbaugh said in his introductory presser. “I wanted this job to be on the biggest stage in the biggest sport. I know the challenges. I understand the expectations. I know the fans are hungry for a winner. We are here with one mission — to become, to earn the right, to be called the world champions in New York, and that’s what we plan to do.”
If that’s to happen, Harbaugh will need more than the expected performances from the Giants’ star players — he’ll also need major bumps from those players whose potential remains under the radar.
Here are your Hidden Gems for the 2026 New York Giants — one underrated veteran, one underrated free agent acquisition, and one underrated draft pick.
Underrated veteran: DB Dru Phillips
“We’re going to be playing nasty. We’re going to play physical. We’re going to play violent. We’re going to live on the edge, play on the edge, but we’re not going to hurt the team. We’re going to be suffocating to the point we impose our wills on people. The players are going to buy into that mindset. It all starts from a mindset. We’re going to play the New York brand of football, and that’s violent defense.”
That’s what new Giants defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson said back in April, when asked what kind of defense he would put on the field.
Philosophically, this would represent a serious improvement over the Giants’ 2025 defensive unit. That group ranked 26th in DVOA, 26th in points allowed, 27th in yards per play allowed, dead last in rushing yards per play allowed… well, you get the idea. It was Not At All Good, and going into a new season without Dexter Lawrence means that others will need to step up.
One of those who could use a bump in performance is third-year defensive back Dru Phillips, selected with the 70th overall pick in the third round of the 2024 draft out of Kentucky. 2024 was the first season under defensive coordinator Shane Bowen, who had replaced Wink Martindale, and that didn’t really work out, though Phillips had a decent first NFL season. Playing primarily in the slot, he allowed 41 catches on 50 targets for 373 yards, 297 yards after the catch, one touchdown, one interception, no pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 96.1.
But before the 2025 season began, Phillips expressed frustration as to how his rookie season had gone.
“Last year, I was part of the problem in communication,” Phillips said in August. “I was so young. I didn’t feel like I was that confident in it. So we’ve all grown, but then when you bring [safety Jevon Holland and cornerback Paulson Adebo in free agency] in, it’s just like the level of knowledge in the room feels like it’s way more than we had in the past. These guys, they play ball at a high level, they know ball also at a really high level. It’s already people that know it, so communication makes it easier.”
In some ways, Philips did his absolute best to make Big Blue’s defense better. You won’t find a lot of DBs totaling 12 pass breakups and nine tackles for loss in one season without garnering some national attention, but he somehow managed to accomplish all of this in 2025.
Dennard Wilson has a history of wanting his defensive backs to play aggressively, which would seem to match Phillips’ playing personality to a “T.” Yes, he’ll need to continue to balance his own aggression with consistency, but the Year 2 tape could be the preface to a much better story.
Underrated free agent: TE Isaiah Likely
Harbaugh didn’t take a lot with him from Baltimore, but the Giants did sign former Ravens tight end Isaiah Likely to a three-year, $40 million contract with $27 million guaranteed. Likely brings his talents to a group of targets for Jaxson Dart that could be formidable if everybody (mostly Malik Nabers) is healthy, and his addition to the Theo Johnson/Chris Manhertz tight end group could be verrrrrrrry interesting.
Harbaugh comes from a Ravens franchise that obviously knows how to utilize multiple tight ends, and the 2025 Giants were surprisingly adept in this regard. They jumped from a 17.40% 12 personnel rate (one back, two tight ends, two receivers) in 2024 to 32.81% last season, and Giants quarterbacks (Dart, Jameis Winston, and Russell Wilson) completed 91 of 140 passes in 12 personnel for 1,245 yards, 693 air yards, seven touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 106.3 — ninth-best in the league.
Now, Likely comes on board after a 2025 season in which he caught 27 passes on 34 targets for 307 yards and a touchdown. That was a downturn from 2024, when he caught 49 passes on 68 targets for 603 yards and seven touchdowns, but Baltimore’s passing game wasn’t quite up to its own level last season. Likely also dealt with a foot injury all season long, and missed three games late in the season.
If there are any lingering issues (and Harbaugh would know), the head coach doesn’t seem too concerned.
“He’s a playmaking football player,” Harbaugh said after the deal was struck. “I think Jaxson is going to really like him running the routes and being in his line of vision. He’s got a big catch radius. He can make plays after he makes the catch.
“He can get upfield. He can make people miss. He can run people over. He’s a very good perimeter blocker. You’ll see that. That’ll be good for our run game. All those things he brings to the table.”
Any port in a storm for an offense that ranked 26th in DVOA last season — if Likely allows the Giants to take hold of the new multi-tight end trend, all the better.
Underrated draft pick: WR Malachi Fields
As for the receivers, there’s a healthy Malik Nabers as the obvious WR1. There’s Darius Slayton as the prohibitive WR2 favorite, and there’s also a whole lot of free agent acquisitions — Calvin Austin, Darnell Mooney, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Braxton Berrios, and Odell Beckham Jr., for goodness’ sake. Who will replace Wan’dale Robinson’s production is another matter, as Robinson is now in Tennessee.
What the Giants didn’t have at the position was a big, physical, contested coverage-beater who could just impose his will on enemy cornerbacks, which is where Malachi Fields comes in. Last season for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, the 6′ 4½“, 218-pound Fields caught 36 passes on 62 targets for 630 yards and five touchdowns, and the Giants were happy to take him with the 74th overall pick in the third round.
Through his time at Virginia and Notre Dame, Fields has never had a spectacular catch rate (58.1% last season, and 59.4% in his college career), but he had just one dropped pass in 2025. With Fields, it’s more that when you’re asked over and over to defy the laws of physics with your catch radius, and every target is an eventual battle royale, those catches don’t come easy.
Teams ask Fields to be a daredevil, and he’s good at it.
There are legitimate questions about the offense’s ceiling with new OC Matt Nagy, but if everything plays out health-wise, the 2026 Giants could have a surprisingly deep and nuanced group of targets for Dart in his second NFL season. Fields, both as a receiver and as a plus blocker, adds a hybrid WR/TE skill set that could put that group over the top.
