The mood has shifted in Giants Nation on the heels of their team’s 3-0 preseason record this summer. It’s not just the record. It’s the sense that the talent level of the team has noticeably increased, and that the offense in particular looks as though it might finally be operational after years of mostly futility.
The question is: Does the pre-season actually forecast anything about how good the team will be once the bell rings in September?
I’m going to use Pro Football Focus grades here to try to portray what Giants teams in the recent past were like in the pre-season. I realize there’s controversy over how relevant they are about the entirety of an individual player’s performance, but the nice thing about looking at the past is that we know how things turned out, and for the team as a whole any number is likely to be more indicative than the number for a single player.
So here’s the question: Does the preseason tell us anything about the regular season to come? PFF goes all the way back to the early 2000s in its grading, but unfortunately they didn’t start grading the pre-season until 2013, so we can’t tell how they saw the Super Bowl 2007 and 2011 teams before their regular seasons began. What I can tell you is that the 2007 team had a 1-3 pre-season record and a -17 point differential, while the 2011 team had a 2-2 record and a +5 point differential. No indication in either year of anything special to come.
Here are the Giants’ team (not individual player) PFF rankings from the 2016 season onward, missing only 2020, when the pre-season was cancelled due to COVID. I’ve color-coded the upper and lower quartiles of team ranking in each category green and red, respectively, for ease of interpretation without having to pore over individual numbers:
Data courtesy of Pro Football Focus
If PFF pre-season grades were actually a harbinger of the season to come, they would suggest that the 2025 team is going to be scary good. They were PFF’s top overall team, second in offense, fourth in defense. They were in the top three in overall offense, passing, pass blocking, receiving, and run blocking. The defense wasn’t quite as dominant, but it still finished in the upper quartile in overall defense, run defense, pass rush, and pass coverage.
Unfortunately, PFF pre-season grades aren’t always good predictors of the season to come. Which pre-season of the nine above most resembles the 2025 pre-season? Clearly, it’s 2019. The Giants went 4-0 that pre-season and were in the upper quartile overall, in most offensive categories, and in several defensive categories. It’s now a memory buried deep in our psyches, but rookie No. 6 pick Daniel Jones seemed to silence all the naysayers, having a terrific pre-season. I’m sure you remember, but in case you don’t, just Google “Daniel Jones pre-season 2019” and see what comes up.
Here for example is a montage of figures from an article in NFL.com entitled, “Mind-Boggling Stats: How Daniel Jones’ preseason stacks up vs. Manning, Mayfield”:
Courtesy of NFL.com
Even the mighty Mahomes, coming off his 50-TD first season, was apparently no match for Jones. And after his heroics in his first start in Tampa, who was going to disagree? The magic lasted one more game, a less impressive win over Washington, and then Jones didn’t win another game until a 5-TD performance in Washington in the next to last game of the season.
Jones led all QBs in PFF passing grade in the 2019 pre-season in what was regarded as a weak QB class compared to the loaded 2018 class:
It wasn’t just the PFF passing grade. Jones completed 85.3% of his passes, leading the 2019 class. He had 2 TDs, no interceptions, a 12.2 yards per attempt that led the pack by a mile, and four big-time throws with only one turnover-worthy play.
In the 2025 preseason, guess who led the rookie quarterback class in what was considered a weak class compared to the loaded 2024 class?
Jaxson Dart led all rookie QBs in passing yards, had 3 TDs and no INTs, had four big-time throws and only one turnover-worthy play. Eerily similar to Daniel Jones’ first preseason. And the football intelligentsia are raving about him. Ted Nguyen of The Athletic:
Ex-NFL quarterback J.T. O’Sullivan of The QB School:
Brian Baldinger:
Ex-NFL QB and No. 2 draft pick Robert Griffin III:
And so on. I’m somewhat inclined to believe the hype about Dart despite the surface similarity to Jones’ rookie pre-season, because QB evaluation has progressed since 2019, and the enthusiasm is based as much on the high-level things he is doing right as it is on the results. Still, he hasn’t played a real game yet and isn’t likely to very soon.
Despite the false promise of 2019, looking back over the last decade, the pre-season has more often been an indicator of the season to come than not. Returning to the chart at the top of this post, we can see that the 2016 pre-season pretty accurately forecast what that Giants team was going to be: A team with an unexpectedly inept offense (26th in points scored) but a good defense (2nd in points allowed) that allowed them to (briefly) sneak into the playoffs. The 2017 team looked somewhat improved on offense and not quite as good on defense in the pre-season, but I don’t think anyone saw the 3-13 debacle coming. The 2018 team played about the same as the 2017 team during the pre-season and was only marginally better once the bell rang. The 2021 pre-season was pretty abysmal in both the PFF categories and the 0-3 record, but in fairness that team was heading toward mediocrity rather than the cellar until Jones’ neck injury led to Joe Judge surrendering by season’s end.
The Brian Daboll era to date has been fairly well predicted by the Giants’ preseason performance. Relative to 2021 they were improved in many areas that PFF measures, especially on defense, and that was a good indicator of the surprise season to come. Then both the 2023 and 2024 pre-seasons were disastrous in PFF’s reckoning, and that turned out to be true in the regular season as well.
So what to make of PFF’s positive impression of the 2025 pre-season Giants in most categories? Is there a playoff season loading? Is Jaxson Dart the next Eli? Is Brian Daboll the next Tom Coughlin, saving his job in his last chance to do it? Or is this 3-0 preseason a false prophet?
0 CommentsSee More:
