Giants are better at edge defender, but are they good enough?

New York Giants general manager Joe Schoen is a believer in the modern view of positional value across the NFL. His treatment of the edge defender position is a prime example.

Schoen’s first draft selection as Giants’ GM was Kayvon Thibodeaux, taken No. 5 overall in the 2022 draft. His biggest swing to improve the team via trade was acquiring Brian Burns from the Carolina Panthers.

The fact that Schoen refused to trade Azeez Ojulari, insisting on a price no one was willing to pay despite the possibility of losing Ojulari as a free agent this offseason, might be considered another example of how Schoen views the position.

Has Schoen gotten the value he sought from the moves he has made?

Current roster: Brian Burns, Azeez Ojulari, Tomon Fox, Patrick Johnson

Injured reserve: Kayvon Thibodeaux

Players drafted since 2022: Thibodeaux (Round 1, No. 5 overall, 2022)

Biggest acquisition: Brian Burns (via trade)

Biggest losses: Lorenzo Carter, Oshane Ximines

Schoen gave up a second-round pick and a pair of fifth-round picks to get Burns, who made two Pro Bowls in his first five NFL seasons.

Burns has been everything the Giants could have hoped for. A dynamic player. A guy who gives maximum effort at all times and plays through injuries. A locker room leader.

Check out these numbers, courtesy of Doug Rush on Threads:

• 10 games played
• 46 total tackles
• 3 missed tackles
• 1 forced fumble
• 7 pass deflections
• 6 sacks (15th best in NFL)
• 39 total pressures (9th best)
• 27 hurries (8th best)
• 84.4 overall grade (13th best)
• 79.8 pass rush (18th best)
• 72.4 tackling
• 82.2 coverage
• 67.6 run defense

Burns, at 26, is a core player the Giants can build with for several seasons to come.

Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images

Figuring out what to make of Thibodeaux is more complicated.

The 23-year-old is a good player. Is he good enough, or can he grow into becoming good enough, to give Schoen what he hoped for when he made Thibodeaux the No. 5 overall pick in 2022 and the first pick of his tenure as GM?

Picking Thibodeaux at that point was a sign that Schoen expected Thibodeaux to be a game-changing player, maybe a franchise-changing one, and a cornerstone player for the Giants through at least a couple of contracts.

Thibodeaux plays with force. No doubt the Giants have been missing his edge-setting physicality while he has been out with a fractured wrist. He occasionally makes splash plays. He did have 11.5 sacks in 2023. Thibodeaux, though, was 75th among 100 qualifying pass rushers last season in pass rush win rate, per Pro Football Focus. Meaning, when he wasn’t getting sacks he wasn’t generating pressure often enough.

Thibodeaux isn’t Aidan Hutchinson, drafted three picks ahead of him in 2022 by the Detroit Lions. He isn’t T.J. Watt, Myles Garrett, Maxx Crosby or Trey Hendrickson. He isn’t Burns or Dexter Lawrence, either.

Could he become that? Maybe. Right now, though, it is hard to say that the Giants have gotten everything they hoped for from Thibodeaux.

Verdict

With Burns, Thibodeaux, and Ojulari the Giants are far better than the days when they were relying on Lorenzo Carter and Oshane Ximines, and hoping that one day Elerson Smith might be healthy enough to become a useful player.

There are questions, though. Will Thibodeaux become the dominant, game-changing player the Giants need him to be? Will they be able to keep Ojulari, who figures to have a robust market in free agency this offseason? If they can’t, how do they replace the quality depth he provides?