It’s week 15 of the NFL season and the 3-10 Washington Commanders will be facing a 2-11 New York Giants team on the road at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey on Sunday at 1:00 pm ET. The Commanders set the tone for the Giants season with a 21-6 drubbing of the Giants in week 1, and the Giants have gone on to win only two games since then, though those two games were against the Chargers and Eagles. Despite the poor record, the Giants season has shown some promise, with the emergence
of QB Jaxson Dart and most of their losses being in 1-score games. HC Brian Daboll was fired after a week 10 loss to the Bears and OC Mike Kafka was promoted to interim HC.
On offense, the Giants are coached by OC and interim HC Mike Kafka. The Giants offense under Daboll ran primarily out of shotgun and made heavy use of RPOs once QB Jaxson Dart took over in week 4. When Kafka took over as HC, he introduced more Pistol formation and made a concerted effort to run Dart less and call more downfield passes. Overall, the Giants offense is ranked 15th in passing yards, 13th in rushing yards, and 23rd in total points.
On defense, the Giants were coached by DC Shane Bowen, former DC of the Tennessee Titans. However, Kafka fired Bowen after the Giants week 12 loss to the Detroit Lions due to the defense being unable all season to maintain a lead. Kafka promoted LB coach Charlie Bullen to interim DC, though the defense didn’t look any better giving up 33 points to the Patriots the very next week. The Giants are coming off a week 14 bye, so it will remain to be seen if the bye affords Bullen opportunity to change up the defensive scheme or playcalling. For the season so far, the Giants defense is ranked 24th against the pass, 31st against the run, and 30th in total points allowed.
I asked Ed Valentine of Big Blue View five questions to better understand the state of the Giants and what to look for in this game.
1) QB Jaxson Dart seems to be mostly a success story, but struggles to stay out of harm’s way. Overall, what’s your scouting report on him, his strengths and weaknesses, and how confident are you (on a scale of 1-10) that he’s a franchise guy?
Dart, in my view, is absolutely a franchise quarterback. I have every bit as much confidence in Dart as Washington fans feel in Jayden Daniels.
Dart has plenty of arm talent, though not the strongest arm in the league. He is a good runner, though we know that relying on a quarterback as a runner — unless you are Josh Allen — is not the best idea. He has toughness. He isn’t afraid. “Moxie” is a word people often use when they talk about Dart. He has leadership ability, and he WANTS to be a guy who lifts the Giants out of the mess they have been in.
2) The Giants invested heavily into their defensive line, with Pro Bowl players in Dexter Lawrence and Brian Burns and the number 3 overall pick in Abdul Carter. Yet they have had one of the NFL’s worst run defenses by virtually any metric. Why has the Giants run defense been so bad?
The truth is the Giants’ run defense has been bad for years. It has been more noticeable this year because it has been historically bad. The Giants have Burns, Carter, and Kayvon Thibodeaux, but those are edge players and not interior defensive linemen. Dexter Lawrence is fantastic, but he isn’t having a great year. He also doesn’t have enough help on the interior of the defensive line.
The off-ball linebackers aren’t great. The run support from the cornerbacks isn’t great. The discipline to be where players are supposed to be isn’t great.
I assume you are aware the Giants fired defensive coordinator Shane Bowen. He just wasn’t the right coordinator to get the most out of the defensive personnel.
So, there are a lot of reasons for the poor run defense.
3) 3rd overall pick Abdul Carter has been benched twice this season and hasn’t shown up much on the stat sheet. What’s going on with him and are you worried he’s already a bust?
Carter is not a bust. He leads all rookies in QB pressures and hits. The talent has flashed. He just has not been the game changer he was expected to be, and I think can and will be eventually.
Carter is the youngest player on the roster. Draft analysts say that there were maturity and entitlement issues with Carter coming out of Penn State that teams knew they would need to deal with. He needs strong leadership to set him on the right path as a professional, and with Brian Daboll turning a blind eye to Carter’s transgressions, didn’t have it. The two beachings have come since Mike Kafka took over as interim head coach.
With the right leadership to make Carter understand what is expected and to hold his feet to the fire he will be fine.
4) What do you think about the Giants firing DC Shane Bowen and promoting LB coach Charlie Bullen to interim DC?
I think Bowen should have been fired loooooooong before he was, and hanging on to him is one of the things that cost Daboll his job as head coach. Co-owner John Mara publicly gave Daboll rope to fire Bowen at the end of last season. He didn’t do it.
After horrible losses to Dallas (Week 2) and Denver (Week 7) where the defense collapsed, and after five games in which the Giants blew double-digit leads, still didn’t do it. Eventually, Daboll fell on that sword.
5) Big picture, what do you think about Brian Daboll being fired but Joe Schoen seemingly being left in charge of the Giants FO?
I wasn’t surprised. Mara said last year that he could separate the coach and the GM, even though they basically came in as a pair in 2022. It was clear that Daboll, although he had a great relationship with Dart, wasn’t going to be the right coach to lead the Giants into the future.
Giants fans tend to freak out about Schoen. There is, though, no guarantee that Schoen will continue as GM beyond the end of this season. We’ll see. The belief right now is that the Giants have not maximized the talent they have, and that coaching has been a problem. That could change if the Giants end up 2-15.
A companion article to this with my answers to Ed’s questions is linked here.
Thanks again to Ed Valentine for taking time out of his day to answer our questions about the Giants.
