John Harbaugh is heading into his first summer in New York with a problem no coach wants and no stopwatch can solve.
Three Giants players tore Achilles tendons this spring, and none of the injuries came in a game or while wearing pads. Defensive tackle Roy Robertson-Harris was first.
Wide receiver and kick returner Gunner Olszewski followed on May 29. Then came undrafted rookie cornerback Thaddeus Dixon.
By the time veterans report to training camp on July 28 and rookies arrive on July 23, Harbaugh will already have spent weeks staring at a medical issue he says doesn’t come with clean answers. “Really, you look for answers and there are none,” Harbaugh told reporters after OTA practice No. 9, via Paul Schwartz of the New York Post. “You can’t predict tendons hardly at all, let alone Achilles, which are the worst.”
The losses hit different parts of the roster, but they all matter.
Robertson-Harris started all 17 games in 2025 and had signed a two-year, $9 million deal with a $5.75 million cap hit in 2026. He tore his Achilles at OTAs and has not been placed on season-ending injured reserve, with Harbaugh saying there is a chance he could come back late in the year. That matters even more because the interior defensive line was already being reshaped by the Dexter Lawrence trade.
Olszewski’s injury wipes out the player who handled 26 kickoff returns for 682 yards last season, a 26.2-yard average. Dixon, a North Carolina corner the Giants signed as an undrafted free agent after a pre-draft visit, is out for the year before he ever takes an NFL snap.
Harbaugh said the team hasn’t backed off the work. “We haven’t changed anything” about the practice schedule or the rigor, he said, but “we’ve added things.” Those additions include testing and monitoring: four new pieces of equipment for strength work and movement screening, along with individualized fitness data designed to show where each player’s risk sits.
The coach was blunt about what he does not believe caused the injuries. Practice load, the usual suspect when a team loses multiple players to the same tendon in a short span, was not the answer in his view.
“There’s no common denominators with any of the three guys, there’s no common denominators with loads or anything else,” Harbaugh said. “There is a common denominator with the movement pattern when they tore it.
Kind of a reset, stepping back reset deal that happened. We try to caution our guys against that.”
That’s Harbaugh trying to describe the moment of injury rather than pinning down a single cause, and his bottom line was simple: “Turn over every stone, all hands on deck.”
The injury list doesn’t stop there. Malik Nabers is expected to open camp on the physically unable to perform list after a second procedure on his knee.
Darius Slayton is rehabbing from core muscle surgery. Cam Skattebo is working back from an ankle injury and has said he’ll be ready for Week 1.
Abdul Carter sprained an ankle in June, but he was back on the field before the spring ended, the one offseason injury note that went the Giants’ way.
New York went 4-13 in 2025 and rebuilt around youth, stacking four first-round picks over two drafts in Carter, Jaxson Dart, Arvell Reese and Francis Mauigoa. That kind of roster leaves little room for injury fallout behind the starters, and camp at The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs will put that depth to the test in a place nobody on this roster has worked before.
Harbaugh inherited a 4-13 team, traded away a Pro Bowl defensive tackle for the No. 10 pick, and then watched a 17-game starter, his kick returner and a corner he wanted to develop all go down without an opponent across from them. His answer has been to tighten the process, not ease it.
The Giants will head to The Greenbrier and find out whether that approach holds up.
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