There used to be an old NFL saying, attributed to Bear Bryant, “Defense wins championships.” For a long time in the NFL, that seemed to be true. For all the hubbub over Eli Manning’s fourth quarter heroics against the Patriots in two Super Bowls, the fact is that the Giants’ defense was primarily responsible for shutting down those explosive Tom Brady-led offenses and giving Eli a chance to win those games at the end.
Still, offense has been king for some time now in the NFL. A lot of that can be attributed to the emergence of Patrick Mahomes, who drove many defenses crazy and created a mini-Kansas City Chiefs dynasty. Now every team seeks its own elite quarterback. Only in rare cases does a quarterback not go No. 1 in the NFL Draft, and this year is expected to be the same with Fernando Mendoza.
Look further, though, and the pendulum seems to be shifting back toward defense. Jalen Hurts had a great game against the Chiefs in last year’s Super Bowl, but the Eagles’ defense set the tone by relentlessly hounding Mahomes, putting the Chiefs in a deep hole. This year for the first time in a long time, we had a Super Bowl where defense was the story on both sides of the ball. Drake Maye and Sam Darnold had great seasons, but their inability to reach the end zone for much of the night defined this game. The Seahawks eventually put a TD up, but for a while there was actually discussion of the kicker being the MVP. On the other side Drake Maye had his worst game of the season, thanks to his leaky offensive line, Seattle’s blitzes, and their disguised coverages that made him hesitate before throwing.
This brings us to the New York Giants. The Giants appear to finally have some difference-making players on offense, with Jaxson Dart tentatively being seen as a future elite quarterback, the rehabbing Malik Nabers already having established himself as elite, rookie Cam Skattebo being…something the NFL hasn’t seen much before, and Wan’Dale Robinson having broken 1,000 receiving yards in Nabers’ absence. Add to that an offensive line that was in the upper half of the NFL rankings for the first time in ages, and there is genuine excitement about the Giants’ prospects on that side of the ball.
The problem now is that the defense has mostly been awful for the past three years…just when the NFL pendulum seems to be swinging back toward “defense wins championships.” The Seahawks provide an interesting lesson on how to reach that point, although they haven’t been worse than 7-10 (in 2021) in any year since 2009. That’s OK – Aaron Schatz’s Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) stat, which measures success on a play-by-play basis considering game situation and opponent, ranks Seattle’s 2025 defense as the 8th best since he started calculating DVOA in 1978. As Giants fans we’re not that greedy. We’ll settle for new head coach and defensive coordinator John Harbaugh and Dennard Wilson building a defense good enough to compete for Super Bowls, even if it’s not an all-time great one.
For the record, Harbaugh’s first four Baltimore Ravens teams all finished 3rd in the NFL in points allowed, long before Wink Martindale or Mike Macdonald were on the scene. (They’d finished 22nd the year before in Brian Billick’s last season as head coach.) That team still had great defensive players such as Ray Lewis, Ed Reed, and Terrell Suggs left over from the Billick era (although the Giants put a 30-10 smackdown on them in Harbaugh’s first season) but it had been 5-11 the year before. During Harbaugh’s first four years he had three different defensive coordinators: Rex Reed, Greg Mattison for two years, then Chuck Pagano for one. Didn’t matter, the defense was good every year. The point is that the Ravens immediately improved under Harbaugh just as the Seahawks did under Macdonald.
Here are Seattle’s team defense numbers and league rankings the past three years:
- 2023: 402 pts (25th), 6,313 yds (30th) (record 9-8)
- 2024: 368 pts (T-11th), 5,656 yds (14th) (record 10-7)
- 2025: 292 pts (1st), 4,860 yds (6th) (record 14-3)
Defense hasn’t been the complete story for Seattle – they went from 364 to 375 to 483 points scored over that three-year period – but the improvement in their defense since Mike Macdonald became head coach has been their distinguishing feature.
The funny thing is that just last season, the Giants put 29 points and 3 touchdowns on the board in their win in Seattle in Macdonald’s first season as head coach. Yes, one of those TDs came from a blocked field goal attempt, but a third offensive TD was lost when Eric Gray fumbled at the goal line. Daniel Jones had 292 yards of offense in what would be his final win as a Giant.
The question then is how the Seahawks got to the point they’re at now – was it the players that they added that turned them into Super Bowl champions, or was most of it due to Macdonald’s coaching?
Here are lists of the 15 Seahawks players who played the most defensive snaps the past three seasons. The color coding indicates how each player was acquired for those that became Seahawks after Macdonald’s arrival. The shorter list at the bottom of each column indicates players who didn’t make the top 15 in that year but did in one of the other years:
Data courtesy of Pro Football Focus
One of the interesting things is that 10 of those key defensive players were already on the team in 2023, 6 of them playing a major number of snaps. That team, which went 9-8, only gave up 37 fewer points (2.2 points fewer per game) than the terrible 2025 Giants defense did, suggesting that they already had a lot of the right players but just didn’t have the coaching. A year later, Seattle GM John Schneider added two defensive pieces in the draft, DT Byron Murphy in Round 1 and ILB Tyrice Knight in Round 4. They also added a UFA, CB Josh Jobe, who started at left CB but has been a subpar player throughout his career. They now had Macdonald, but that team still lost to the Giants.
This year, Seattle only added one draftee of note on defense, safety Nick Emmanwori, who became a starter by mid-season and played well. They made one notable free agent signing, DeMarcus Lawrence, whom Dallas had let walk after a season in which he suffered a lisfranc injury and was not willing at age 33 to take a pay cut. Lawrence returned to his earlier form in 2025 in Seattle.
The point of all this is that with only a couple of major additions to the defense in 2024 and a couple more in 2025, the Seahawks went from one of the worst defenses in the NFL to the consensus best defense in the NFL in two years. Mike Macdonald and his staff have to get a lot of the credit for that improvement, even if it took two years to fully accomplish.
Let’s compare 2023 Seattle to the present Giants. The 2023 Seahawks went 9-8, a far cry from the Giants’ 4-13, so it’s not apples to apples. Still, you can argue that the Giants let 5 victories slip through their hands with late defensive collapses (Dallas, Denver, Green Bay, Detroit, Chicago) and could have been as good as 9-8.
The Seahawks appear to have had more defensive talent when Macdonald arrived than John Harbaugh and Dennard Wilson find themselves with now. (Some of that of course is courtesy of Joe Schoen, who directly or indirectly sent them Leonard Williams and Julian Love.) The only truly elite players were Devon Witherspoon and Lawrence, but they had several above-average players in Love, Williams, and Mafe.
The problem with assessing the Giants’ defense is separating player talent from player coaching and defensive scheme. Let’s categorize the Giants’ primary defensive players as things stand presently:
Present/future stars: Brian Burns, Abdul Carter
Once a star, now an enigma: Dexter Lawrence, Kayvon Thibodeaux, Bobby Okereke
Rising, but how far?: Cor’Dale Flott, Micah McFadden, Dane Belton
Solid or above average players before becoming Giants: Paulson Adebo, Jevon Holland
Young unproven players: Deonte Banks, Tyler Nubin, Andru Phillips, Darius Alexander
The glass-half-full picture is that the Giants already have most of what they need on defense, and that with better coaching and defensive schemes, they are only a couple of players away from being a good defense. The glass-half-empty view is that only Burns, Carter, and perhaps Flott and McFadden are keepers, and that any or most of the others could be ex-Giants by September.
Here are the progressions of PFF overall defense grades for some of these players (the ones with the biggest question marks about their futures) over the last five years or however long they have been in the NFL if less than that:
- Lawrence: 68.6, 91.6, 92.9, 89.9, 75.6
- Thibodeaux: 72.5, 58.4, 69.0, 66.0
- Okereke: 58.5, 73.3, 79.0, 74.9, 56.3
- Adebo: 60.3, 49.1, 78.6, 63.3, 58.4
- Holland: 84.7, 67.2, 90.4, 63.0, 58.4
- Banks: 51.5, 50.9, 42.4
- Nubin: 65.8, 57.2
- Phillips: 78.5, 63.0
Each of these players was at one time considered the answer at their position, but each performed worse in 2024 and/or 2025 than they had historically:
- Lawrence blossomed under Andre Patterson, becoming arguably the best IDL this side of Aaron Donald for two seasons. Then came his elbow injury and a corresponding decrease in his lining up in the A-gap relative to the B-gap, and his play declined. Lawrence apparently re-injured the elbow in November. He has also gained weight. Will he be healthy in the 2026 season? Will Harbaugh and Wilson get him back in shape, and where will they line him up?
- Thibodeaux is in some sense a better all-around player now than he was when he came into the league. His run defense overall was the best it’s been in his four years according to PFF, but it’s a mixed bag – his run “stop” (unsuccessful running play) rate has gotten higher, but his missed tackles have increased and his sack rate has decreased. Thibodeaux missed the final seven games with injury, so we did not get to see whether Charley Bullen replacing Shane Bowen would have affected his play.
- Okereke was a revelation under Wink Martindale in 2023, playing the best pass coverage of his career and becoming a force in pressuring the quarterback. Under Bowen though Okereke rarely rushed, and especially in 2025 his run defense was awful, with the highest missed tackle rate of his career.
- Adebo peaked in 2023 and wasn’t as good before getting injured in 2024. His first season as a Giant was even worse. He’s only given up 1, 1, and 2 TDs in the past three seasons after yielding 4 and 5 in his first two years, but his passer rating against, which was an impressive 69.9 and 67.0 in 2023 and 2024, jumped to 92.0 in his first year as a Giant.
- Holland had two elite years as a Dolphin, but those alternated with two mediocre seasons. His first Giants season was the worst of his career by overall PFF grade, and especially in pass coverage, but he continued a career-long trend of fitting the run well. Is the real Jevon Holland a good or a so-so player?
- Banks supposedly is a better man than zone corner, but after showing promise in the first half of his rookie year, the impression is now that he can’t really play either scheme at the NFL level. Assuming he is even on the roster (he’s a good kick returner if nothing else), can the new coaching staff get any useful defensive play from him?
- Nubin is arguably one of Schoen’s most disappointing picks, given that he was a ballhawk in college and has yet to intercept even one pass in two NFL seasons. If that isn’t bad enough, his run defense and tackling, which were good in his rookie season, cratered in his sophomore year, encapsulated by the poor angles, slow reaction times, and subpar speed he showed on many long runs. Can Harbaugh and his staff find the player he was at Minnesota?
- Phillips is a player I was excited about in his rookie season. He was a demon in run coverage and did well enough in pass coverage. In Year 2, though, his run defense regressed and his pass coverage limitations began to be exposed. The question is whether Phillips can operate successfully in the NFL anywhere except near the line of scrimmage.
That’s eight big question marks, a lot to have for one defense. Several of them may be answered as early as next month if Harbaugh and Schoen decide to release players like Okereke and Banks and/or trade someone like Thibodeaux. That just creates question marks of a different kind, though, since replacements don’t currently exist on the roster.
If Harbaugh and Wilson can instead answer even half these questions positively, by making them better players working under better defensive schemes, and Schoen can hit on a draft pick and a free agent, then perhaps the 2026 Giants defense can become something like what Macdonald and Schneider turned the Seahawks’ defense into in 2024. Maybe by 2027 we’ll look back and say that, like the Seahawks pre-Macdonald, 10 of the Giants key defensive players were already on the roster in 2025, and it just took good coaching and a couple more players to make them contenders. If not, and WYSIWYG with the current roster, then it may be a long road to playoff contention, Harbaugh or not.
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