There’s real buzz around the Giants right now, and a lot of it comes back to one simple idea: this roster looks built to give Jaxson Dart a fighting chance.
That’s the plan, anyway. New York spent the offseason loading up around its young quarterback, and the front office has given him a much deeper menu of options than he had before. ESPN’s Jordan Raanan pointed to the Giants’ skill-position additions as part of that support system, but he made it clear he thinks the bigger swing came up front.
That matters even more with Malik Nabers’ status hanging over everything. Nabers is still working back from a serious knee injury and is uncertain for Week 1, though the Giants are still hopeful.
He had his right ACL and meniscus repaired and then needed a second surgery earlier this year to remove scar tissue. That’s a lot to ask a receiver to bounce back from, especially when the calendar is creeping toward the start of the season.
If Nabers is ready, the Giants’ offense looks a whole lot more dangerous. If he isn’t, they at least have built-in answers.
Isaiah Likely, Darnell Mooney, Calvin Austin III, Odell Beckham Jr. and JuJu Smith-Schuster give Dart a group with plenty of different paths to usefulness. Likely and Mooney should be solid additions, Austin brings explosive potential, and Beckham and Smith-Schuster could be steady options if they hit.
But the whole group is volatile, and that volatility gets easier to manage if Nabers is on the field. He’s still the one elite piece in the passing game, the player who changes how defenses have to line up. Without him, the Giants are asking a lot more from everyone else.
That’s where the offensive line comes in, and where the real argument around this team starts to get interesting. The Giants didn’t just patch the line; they may have turned it into the offense’s best unit.
With the 10th draft pick, they took right guard Francis Mauigoa, and they also signed All-Pro fullback Patrick Ricard. Raanan also pointed to Sisi Mauigoa and Ricard as pieces that could help keep things moving if Nabers isn’t back right away.
The funny part is that people still talk about the Giants’ line like it’s a disaster. The numbers say otherwise.
New York finished 11th in pass protection and 18th in run blocking, and that came with Andrew Thomas missing four games, Jon Runyan Jr. missing one, John Michael Schmitz missing four and Jermaine Eluemunor missing one. It wasn’t a dominant group, but it was a quality one.
Dart also had plenty of help from the ground game. The Giants finished 5th in rushing yards per game, rushing touchdowns and rushing EPA last season.
So this isn’t a team trying to invent a run game from scratch. The bigger question is whether the workload shifts enough away from Dart and onto the backs.
That’s important because Dart can run. He’s one of the best running quarterbacks in the NFL and moves like a back with the ball in his hands.
The vision and agility are real weapons, but they need to be the backup plan, not the engine. If the Giants can pair a top-5 rushing attack with a quarterback who uses his legs selectively, that’s a major boost.
Nabers’ absence, though, would still leave a hole that’s hard to fake. The Giants can talk themselves into Mooney, Slayton, Beckham or Smith-Schuster stepping up, but none of that fully replaces what Nabers does when he forces defenses to account for him everywhere on the field. Without that, the passing game becomes much harder to stress.
And that leads to the other big issue: can the Giants make defenses respect the pass enough to keep the run game humming? Split-field coverages like Cover 2 and Cover 4 have helped fuel the run-game revival around the league because they leave offenses with lighter boxes and better numbers. If defenses don’t feel threatened by the Giants’ receivers, they can make life a lot harder on the ground.
That’s the tension hanging over camp. The Giants have clearly upgraded the roster around Dart.
The offensive line looks stronger, the run game already has a solid base, and the pass-catching group has more depth than it did before. But whether all of that is enough without Malik Nabers is the question that will define this offense as training camp gets underway.
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Fields path gets more interesting because the Giants are still sorting out the rest of the room, and Malik Nabers is not a sure thing to be fully available when the season opens. That leaves the rookie in the kind of in-between spot that can change fast if injuries linger, and it is exactly the sort of situation that can turn a quiet projection into a much bigger debate by the time Week 1 arrives. [Read more 🡒]