Where does Giants’ defensive coordinator Shane Bowen rank among his peers?

Here is one opinion

There has been a great deal of discussion this offseason about whether Shane Bowen is the right defensive coordinator to take full advantage of the personnel upgrades the New York Giants made on that side of the ball this offseason.

Pro Football and Sports Network has weighed in on how it ranks Bowen in relation to his peers, and it’s not great. PFSN has Bowen, entering his second season with the Giants, ranked No. 23 among defensive coordinators.

PFSN says:

The New York Giants were unremarkable in Shane Bowen’s first season as their defensive coordinator, finishing with a below-average defense in 2024. They were not particularly bad but certainly pedestrian.

Bowen was a solid defensive coordinator for Tennessee from 2021 to 2023, and he gets plenty more talent to work with in 2025 than he had in New York last year. Abdul Carter, Jevón Holland, and Paulson Adebo provide him with a new infusion of talent to help him climb these rankings.

“Unremarkable” is a good way to describe the Giants’ 2024 defense. The Giants did finish ninth in the NFL in sacks, but they were 21st in points allowed and near the bottom of the league in run defense, takeaways and passer rating against.

All of that led co-owner John Mara to demand defensive improvement when he spoke to the media in January.

“Quite frankly, I didn’t think our defense played very well this year at all,” Mara said. “I know that when you have an offense that performs like that [31st in points scored], you’re putting more pressure on your defense. But we need to make improvements there. I’m tired of watching teams go up and down the field on us. So, I think that has to be addressed.”

The Giants certainly did that by adding Abdul Carter with the No. 3 overall pick and defensive tackle Darius Alexander in Round 3 of the 2025 NFL Draft, and by signing Holland, Adebo, Chauncey Golston and Roy Robertson-Harris in free agency.

There is no reason the Giants’ defense shouldn’t be improved in 2024.

Bowen understands the expectations.

“I wouldn’t say pressure. I’m driven by the guys. My job is to get these guys ready to go out there to execute at the highest level, to maximize their potential, and to perform and ultimately win,” he said this spring. “So I’m driven by that. Come to work every day for them, doing everything I can to make them improve, to help them improve, to help our team improve.

“That’s really what fuels me. Don’t really feel the pressure of it. We’re working every day to improve right now. It’s still early. There is a lot of moving parts still that we’ll figure out and we’re figuring out each day how we’re going to make it work.”

Whether Bowen can be flexible enough to make the pieces work is something that will be worth watching.

“I think that’s a big part of coaching. We got to make sure we’re doing everything we can to put these guys individually in positions they’re most successful at, right, to make sure we’re comfortable,” Bowen said.

“Obviously there is going to be different things within the scheme that you can’t always do certain things every single play, right? But doing our best to maximize their skillsets to what they’re most comfortable at, putting them in positions to do things.

“Always trying to evolve. You never want to stay the same. If you stay the same, you’re not improving, so always trying to evolve what we do from the ground level all the way up through.”

Bowen does have supporters. Veteran NFL analyst Greg Cosell was complementary during a recent appearance on the ‘Inside The Birds’ podcast:

“They’ve [the Giants] got a really good d coordinator in Shane Bowen, who’s been around the league, does some really nice things with pressure schemes,” Cosell said. “It comes down to how quickly you can assimilate because Shane Bowen’s really good with pressure. Not pressure maybe the way you think of Rex Ryan and all that. He’s really good with simulated pressures rushing four, he’s really good at that. He’s really good at overloads where you might only rush four, maybe five.

“He’s just really good, and that requires a lot of detail.”

We will see how it plays out. Bowen’s ability to maximize the defense’s potential could have a lot to do with the success or failure of the Giants’ 2025 season.