The San Francisco 49ers and New York Giants have some similarities this season.
They’re both coming off their worst loss of the season, at least in terms of point differential, because the Giants’ worst loss of the season was
when they allowed 33 fourth-quarter points to the Broncos. Both teams are dealing with injuries to two of their best players: the 49ers on defense and the Giants on offense.
But the significant difference between the two teams is their records. The 49ers sit at 5-3 and are still competing in the NFC West, while the Giants are 2-6 and have already dug themselves a deep hole in the NFC East.
The 49ers hope those trends continue as they visit the Meadowlands to take on the Giants on Sunday. These are the numbers to know for the matchup:
6.1
The Giants’ pass rush has a 6.1 sack percentage, 22nd in the league.
The New York pass rush is quite perplexing, to say the least. The names and talent are there, but the results haven’t matched. New York’s 18 sacks on the season put them in the middle of the league, with more than half of those sacks coming at the credit of one player.
Brian Burns is tied with Myles Garrett atop the NFL with his 10 sacks through eight games this season. Of those eight games, Burns has recorded a sack in seven, with at least two in three. With how the 49ers’ offensive line poorly handled Will Anderson and Danielle Hunter last week, Burns should be salivating at the thought of facing the San Francisco front.
But outside of Burns, there hasn’t been a ton of production from the New York pass rush. The eight other Giants that have recorded a sack this season have combined for just eight sacks, with Kayvon Thibodeaux leading the way with 2.5 after combining for 17 sacks the last two seasons. The same for Dexter Lawrence, who only has half a sack in 2025 after recording a career-high nine in just 12 games last season. Even top-pick Abdul Carter has struggled with just a half sack of his own on more snaps played than Lawrence.
While the sack numbers haven’t been impressive, the Giants have been creating pressure. While Burns leads the team and league in sacks, he doesn’t lead the Giants in pressures. That would be the rookie Carter with 32. Then comes Burns with 27, followed by Thibodeaux with 25 and Lawrence with 16.
The New York pass rush has felt like a sleeping giant (pun semi-intended) this season. Hopefully, the 49ers’ offensive line doesn’t have a repeat performance from Houston because the Giants’ pass rush could make them pay.
148.9
New York’s defense has allowed 148.9 rushing yards per game, third-worst in the league.
A few weeks back, I mentioned how Atlanta’s run defense was the worst the 49ers had faced at that point of the season, and it needed to be a big Christian McCaffrey game. McCaffrey came through with a season-high 129 rushing yards and a pair of touchdowns.
The Giants’ run defense is significantly worse than Atlanta’s, meaning Sunday will need to be another big McCaffrey game.
New York has allowed at least 100 rushing yards in all but two games and is fresh off their worst performance of the season. Last week against Philadelphia, Saquon Barkley ripped a 65-yard touchdown run on his first touch of the game, and it only got worse from there. Barkley finished the game with 150 rushing yards on 15 attempts before a groin injury forced an early exit. That proved to be no problem, as Tank Bigsby rushed for 104 yards on nine attempts in relief.
Barkley and Bigsby were the second and third running backs to rush for more than 100 yards against the Giants this season, with Omarion Hampton being the first back in Week 4, when he ran for 128 yards on 12 attempts. All three averaged more than 10 yards per attempt against the Giants, meaning big run opportunities are there for McCaffrey, something that he’s been lacking this season.
McCaffrey has yet to gain more than 20 yards on a run this season, with his longest rush being a pair of 15-yard runs, one against the Cardinals and one against the Falcons. Sunday might be his best chance to get one of those patented McCaffrey explosive runs, finally.
3.3
Giants’ running backs not named Cameron Skattebo average 3.3 yards per attempt.
The Giants’ run game struggled in the first two games of the season when Tyrone Tracy was RB1 on the New York depth chart. Cam Skattebo took over in Week 3 after Tracy suffered a shoulder injury, and the New York run game took off, rushing for at least 100 yards in five consecutive games (Jaxson Dart’s mobility helped as well).
Then in Week 8, Skattebo suffered his unfortunate season-ending ankle injury, and New York only squeaked out a season-low 68 rushing yards in the loss to Philadelphia.
In his eight games, Skattebo averaged 4.1 yards per attempt and nearly doubled Tracy’s per-game output – 51.3 yards per game compared to 26.5. But now New York must revert to some sort of combo of Tracy and Devin Singletary, both of whom have had struggles. The most yards Tracy has rushed for in a game was 47 in Week 7, but that number was boosted by his season-long 31-yard touchdown early in the loss to Denver. Singletary hasn’t offered much more, with his season-high sitting at 28 last month in a win against the Chargers.
San Francisco’s run defense has been hit or miss this season, with the ever-rotating cast the defense has had to use due to injury, but New York shouldn’t be too harsh a test for a line with a debuting Keion White and Clelin Ferrell. As long as the defense doesn’t let Dart beat them with his legs – or arm – they should fare much better than they did against Houston.
