Can the New York Giants get their offense on track against the Arizona Cardinals? That’s one of the big questions hanging over the team as they enter Week 4.
The Giants offense has been, in a word, bad since their surgical, suffocating win over the Dallas Cowboys back in week 1. Since then, they’ve scored 6 points in a loss to the Los Angeles Rams in Week 2 and a whopping 12 points against the Tennessee Titans in Week 3.
That isn’t going to cut it going forward, and the Giants need to figure out their
offense. Will that start against the Cardinals?
The Cardinals’ defense
The Cardinals were one of the (many) teams to hire a new head coach this offseason, hiring Los Angeles Rams offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur. LaFleur made the surprising decision to retain Nick Rallis as the Cardinals defensive coordinator rather than start fresh on that side of the ball.
Rallis has been the Cardinals’ defensive coordinator since 2023, which means that the decision to keep him gives the Giants much more tape to plan for his scheme and tendencies than they’d have if LeFleur hired a new coordinator.
And while Rallis spent two years coaching linebackers for the Philadelphia Eagles (2021 and 2022), he isn’t the same kind of “Fangio Adjacent” defensive mind that the Giants have seen in each of the first three weeks of the season. Instead, he runs an unorthodox defensive scheme that’s built on a “three-deep” coverage shell and the versatility of safety Budda Baker.
By using a three-deep coverage shell, the Cardinals look to both take away explosive plays as well as add uncertainty to quarterbacks’ pre-snap reads. They typically play with three defensive linemen, leading to light boxes that invite runs. However, Rallis makes heavy use of disguise in his scheme and led the NFL by disguising his defense on 70% of plays last year.
To do that, he relies chiefly on Baker as a flex player who can either play deep or rotate down into the tackle box as a MONEY backer, or safety/linebacker hybrid. That allows the Cardinals to effectively play base 3-4 concepts against heavier personnel sets or nickel concepts against lighter sets, as well as fluidly transition between base and nickel defenses on a moment’s notice.
Unfortunately for the Cardinals, they lost starting cornerback Will Johnson to a neck injury, forcing 2025 fifth- round pick Denzel Burke into the starting role. Burke started eight games for the Cardinals last year and played relatively well, though he had eight missed tackles. This year he seems to have taken a step backward and surrendered a 72.7% completion rate, two touchdowns, and 9.1 yards per target through three games (one start)
It’s worth noting that none of the Cardinals’ corners are taller than 5-foot-11, which could present an opportunity for Malachi Fields and Isaiah Likely.
More importantly, while the Cardinals’ defense is unorthodox and generally well-schemed… It hasn’t been very good this year.
They’re bottom three in the NFL with 0.15 EPA per play added to to the opposing offense, bottom three in passing touchdowns allowed (eight), as well as giving up a league-worst 6.5 yards per play. Their run defense has been better than their pass defense, however they’re still in the bottom third of the NFL in yards and yards per carry allowed.
Overall, the scheme of the Cardinals’ defense will put the onus on Matt Nagy and Jameis Winston to decipher their rotations. Once they do, however, their propensity to run zone coverages and Cover 3 offers opportunities for Malik Nabers and Darnell Mooney to pick up yards after the catch, while Fields and Likely are proving to be effective zone busters. Likewise, their tendency to play lighter packages and counter the run with scheme may be an opportunity for the run-heavy Giants.
That said, the Giants may look to use pulling blockers and attack the edges of the Cardinals’ defense if they play more TITE fronts to clog interior gaps.
Jameis Winston at quarterback, again
Giants’ head coach John Harbaugh confirmed after the Giants traded for J.J. McCarthy that Winston would remain the starting quarterback through the foreseeable future. However, that doesn’t mean that his job is safe indefinitely.
Winston has been shaky — at best — since taking over for Jaxson Dart. He hasn’t appeared sure of his reads, has held the ball at times, and has consistently thrown short of his targets. Winston, and the Giants were able to do enough to beat the Titans, but only because the defense — and elements — shut Tennessee out in the first half.
The question is how much of Winston’s performance was due to a short week and the nor’easter. Can Winston settle in and finally develop a rapport with his receivers on a normal week of practice and find them on a sunny fall day?
Matt Nagy and the Giants’ brain trust has generally done a decent job of creating easy answers for their quarterback. Winston’s targets were open by an average of 3.3 yards against the Titans and he only attempted a tight window throw on three passes. It seems likely at this point that the Cardinals will almost certainly use their base defense concepts to gap out the Giants’ offensive front. We’ll likely see Baker playing downhill while the Cardinals use a TITE front to try and force the Giants’ slower running backs to run laterally.
The Giants want to run the ball. They have the seventh-most rushing attempts in the NFL despite having the sixth-fewest drives in the NFL. It seems likely that the Cardinals will plan to force Winston to prove that he can beat them with his arm. The Giants’ ball control offense looked suffocating in Week 1, but it needs to end in touchdowns to work.
Not only do the Giants have the sixth-fewest drives in the NFL, their average drive eats up the most clock in the NFL. That means that points are at a premium, because they simply don’t get many opportunities per game to score with the style of football they want to play.
New York may need Winston to prove that he’s still a productive passer in order to open things up for the run game if Arizona decides that the Giants won’t beat them on the ground.
The red zone offense
The Giants did a pretty good job of moving the ball between the 20’s against the Titans’ defense, particularly in the second half. The were largely able to do what they wanted and pretty easily marched down the field to get into scoring position multiple times. However, their red zone offense was both bad, weird… And utterly ineffective.
It’s possible that Nagy didn’t fully trust Winston in the red zone, particularly the low red zone where the defense is the most condensed and the game is the fastest. It’s also possible that the Giants were wary of the tricky conditions brought about by the storm.
Whatever the reason, they squandered every opportunity to score touchdowns and build a commanding lead over the Titans.
The Giants had nine plays against the Titans in the red zone. Of them, only two were passing plays and of the seven running plays, only one (a toss to Najee Harris from the 16 yard line) got more than 10 yards. Likewise, of the Giants’ nine red zone plays, only two were vertical — a run up the middle by Cam Skattebo and a pass into the end zone from Winston.
Everything else was designed to go laterally.
That’s a stark contrast from what the Giants did in Week 1 against the Cowboys. They had 12 plays in the Red Zone against the Cowboys, seven of which were vertical, while five were designed to be lateral. The Giants had four red zone plays against the Rams, and only one of them (an off tackle run by Harris) began by advancing the ball toward the end zone. And even the run by Harris still had a downhill component.
It’s certainly possible that Winston isn’t reading the defense quickly enough or isn’t fully comfortable with the scheme or receivers. But that shouldn’t excuse play calls and play designs that actively work against the strengths of the Giants’ skill players. Malik Nabers and Darnell Mooney each have the ability to uncover at will with their quickness, while Malachi Fields and Isaiah Likely each have size advantages as well as good quickness for their size as well. Cam Skattebo and Najee Harris, meanwhile, are downhill runners. They have powerful lower bodies, but lack the quickness and speed to outflank many defenders.
We won’t get into the mystifying decision to use Skattebo as a wildcat quarterback. But even leaving that aside, asking downhill runners to run laterally and their only non-broken pass attempt being a bubble screen on a slippery field were poor decisions.
The Giants need to get back to attacking into the end zone. The game is too fast there to rely on yards after the catch or to consistently expect to outflank NFL defenses. And, as mentioned above, if the Giants aren’t going to have many drives per game, they need to make sure those drives finish with touchdowns.
