Were the Giants a better or worse team in 2024 than in 2023?

On the day after games, we usually discuss the Pro Football Focus grades for the game to get some insights into who played well and who didn’t. Sunday’s meaningless game (except for draft positioning) does not warrant that level of attention. Let’s instead look at PFF grades for the full season and ask: Did the Giants improve or decline in 2024?

Bill Parcells would say that the answer is obvious: 6-11 vs. 3-14. You are what your record says you are. If you are Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll, though, and you now know that you have been given a reprieve for another year, you can’t change all 53 players, nor would you want to. PFF grades are of interest in this regard since their analysts focus only on what individual players do on individual plays. They do not assess the wisdom of the play calls or overall game strategy, so they are closer to being a measure of the strength of the roster than a measure of in-game decisions by the coaching staff. So we’ll look at 2023 vs. 2024…but let’s add 2022. Schoen and Daboll’s first season was fascinating, both at the time given how unexpected it was and in retrospect since it seems to have been a black swan event.

Overall, PFF gave the Giants a grade of 68.6 in 2022 (fourth-worst in the NFL), 60.9 in 2023 (worst), and 68.5 (fourth-worst) in 2024. Taken at face value, this might indicate that the coaching staff performed wonders in 2022 by getting that team to the playoffs and even in 2023, when they managed to win six games. By that metric, 2024 was a coaching disaster, since PFF assesses individual player performance as comparable to their playoff season two years earlier. You can to some extent attribute it to the tougher schedules they faced in 2023 and especially 2024 compared to 2022. People also like to claim that it reflects the league figuring out Daboll and Mike Kafka’s offense by the second half of the 2022 season, but that is hard to prove one way or the other.

We can gain more insight by looking at the individual components of offense and defense, a kind of police lineup if you will. First, let’s look at the offense and see if we can round up the usual suspects:

Offense grades

Courtesy of Pro Football Focus

Overall, the offense was 11th worst in the NFL in 2022 but nosedived to second-worst in 2023 and recovered somewhat (but only to fourth-worst) in 2024. For 2023, I look at the lineup and say, “Officer, it’s the guys with the orange hair (pass blocking and run blocking).” As we’ve stated before, PFF’s season pass blocking grade for the Giants was not only the worst in the NFL, it was the worst in PFF’s two decades of analyzing NFL film. The run blocking was no better. The offensive line rebuild in 2024 with the hiring of Carmen Bricillo and the signing of free agents Jermaine Eluemunor, Jon Runyan Jr., and Greg Van Roten certainly helped, but the blocking only recovered to a bit less than the 2022 level because of the inadequate depth at tackle that was exposed after Andrew Thomas’ lisfranc injury and Eluemunor’s absence for a few games.

Along with the blocking, the Giants’ rushing grade plummeted in 2023 from its excellent 90 grade in 2022. This may in part be due to the run blocking problem, which gave Saquon Barkley fewer clean looks to get into space where he can perform his magic. (See 2024 Saquon behind the Eagles’ line as evidence.) Barkley also missed four games with injury at a crucial point early in the season when Giants’ fortunes went south and may have been at less than full health when he returned.

That explains more than anything why 2023 was so bad. To understand why 2024 was even worse, though, we need to look elsewhere. Overall the offense graded only five points worse in 2024 than 2022, and the blocking grade was fairly similar in those two years, as was the receiving grade. The passing grade, though, was down by seven points from its 2022 and 2023 levels. Daniel Jones was bad in both years compared to his career-best 2022, but 2023 Tyrod Taylor + Tommy DeVito > 2024 Drew Lock + DeVito. The 2024 rushing grade wasn’t up to the 2022 standard, but it did improve from 2023.

The bottom line: Everything about 2024 offense was better than 2023 except the passing. Or as Daboll would say:

Defense

The Giants’ defense was pretty bad in Wink Martindale’s first season as defensive coordinator (third-worst in the NFL). That was partly due to the run defense and partly due to pass coverage problems. The bad run defense may surprise you since you think of players like Dexter Lawrence and Leonard Williams, both of them stout against the run. The problem was other players such Jihad Ward, Justin Ellis, Ryder Anderson, Henry Mondeaux, and Tae Crowder, all with significant playing time and all terrible stopping the run. It got better in 2023 and got even a little better in 2024, despite the Giants’ trading Williams in mid-2023 and replacing him with JAGs. The Giants’ bad run D this season mostly came before the bye. After, the Giants played average or above-average against the run in every game except the Baltimore blowout. Perhaps that was Andre Patterson working his magic on all the youngsters who got lots of playing time, plus just the benefit of experience.

Overall, though, the Giants’ defense only improved to sixth-worst in 2023. In 2024, though, it finished middle of the pack (13th worst). The great mystery of the Giants’ defense is how it went from one of the better tackling groups in the NFL in 2022 (71.7, eighth-best in the NFL) to seventh-worst in 2023 (42.0). In 2024, it was only modestly better in grade (48.5) but 15th best in the NFL, i.e., the league has a tackling problem in general. Maybe it’s the new rules on how you can tackle without getting flagged: The best team tackling grade went from 90.0 in 2022 (SF) to 82.4 in 2023 (DAL) to 74.9 in 2024 (NE).

The pass rush wasn’t the Giants’ problem this year. It was middle of the pack in 2022 (68.8) and dropped to seventh-worst but with a similar grade in 2023 (66.1). It improved to a tie for sixth in 2024 (76.3), and the team was tied for eighth in sacks in the NFL. The big problem was pass coverage. The Giants had trouble covering receivers in 2022 (53.3, third-worst in the NFL) despite playing a pretty veteran lineup at the second and third levels. Maybe it took a year for them to used to Winks’ defense, but the Giants’ coverage grade jumped to 77.2, middle of the pack, in 2023. Mostly that was due to the additions of players such as Bobby Okereke and Isaiah Simmons, plus Xavier McKinney, who had his best season. In 2024, though, the Giants’ coverage grade has returned to being abysmal (52.3, 5th worst in the NFL), with McKinney gone, his replacements playing poorly, and 2023 first round pick Tae Banks regressing.

The bottom line: Everything about the 2024 defense was better than 2023…except the pass coverage.

What’s the answer?

Overall, the 2024 roster seems to be better than the one from 2023 based on individual performances, yet the results were worse. At the coaching level, it’s not clear that Daboll taking over the offensive play-calling duties from Kafka was a good thing. On defense, the more passive, zone-heavy defensive approach of current defensive coordinator Shane Bowen seems less satisfactory than the aggressive, man-heavy approach of Martindale, but the results haven’t been any worse overall.

Rather (and I realize this will sound like I’m supporting Joe Schoen’s “We’re not far off” declaration during the bye), the Giants as currently constituted are weak in a few key areas that have outsized importance for actually winning games as opposed to generating good PFF grades:

• Daboll’s remark about good quarterback play, whether off-handed or calculated to send a message to Schoen and Mara, is absolutely true, but not just in the way we usually think. Yes, the Giants’ starting quarterback situation is worse than probably every other team in the NFL right now. There’s not a team in the playoffs this season that didn’t get at least decent quarterback play, and while good QB play is not enough by itself (see: Joe Burrow), it goes a long way. Beyond that, though, injuries happen in the NFL, and you have to have a good backup. aboll had that when Tyrod Taylor was a Giant, but then he ruined it by starting DeVito over him when Taylor returned from his injury. That ended any chance he’d re-sign with them, and with it went any chance that the Giants could make hay with their easier schedule after Jones was benched. The Giants need to find not only QB1 this off-season, but also a viable QB2 – one a proven veteran, the other a draft choice, in some order. It’s on Schoen that the Giants’ quarterback room this year is so bad – both because the Jones contract was bad and also because the next QB he drafts will be his first.
• The secondary needs a high-level veteran presence, and it needs a high-end draft pick that can be a CB1. Tae Banks is clearly not him; maybe he can be a CB2. In the 2024 draft, boundary corners Kool-Aid McKinstry and Kamari Lassiter went off the board at No. 40 and 41, just after the No. 39 pick that Schoen included in the trade for Brian Burns. Tyler Nubin, the safety he got at No. 47, showed flashes and may become a good player, but it hurts that the two cornerbacks weren’t available.
• By year’s end the IDL didn’t seem to be the problem that it was early in the year, but still, a formidable DT to start next to Dexter Lawrence would help a lot:

Dexy is double-teamed more often than any other IDL. He performs about as expected when double-teamed, but when he’s not, he’s almost off the charts. As I said in the tweet above, if the Giants don’t like the player that drops to them at No. 3 among Cam Ward, Shedeur Sanders, and Travis Hunter, Mason Graham would be one heck of a consolation prize to line up next to Dexy. If not, notice that the Eagles’ Milton Williams was fourth-best this year when not double-teamed; he’s potentially a free agent in 2025.

A quarterback (plus a backup), a cornerback, and an interior defensive lineman. Washington (No. 20 in overall PFF grade), Buffalo (No. 19), Houston (No. 16), Green Bay (No. 15), and the LA Rams (No. 14) are all playoff teams this year whose rosters are judged as decidedly “mid” overall by PFF. Maybe Schoen’s “we’re not far off” isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds…once you get the quarterback.