The Giants are heading back to New Jersey with one of the same old problems hanging over camp: the secondary still doesn’t look settled.
Deonte Banks has forced his way into the conversation for first-team reps, and that alone tells you how unsettled things are. The 25-year-old has played hard enough and well enough in the opening stretch of training camp to earn a look with the starters.
At the same time, Paulson Adebo has not locked things down the way a veteran corner expected to lead this group should. He’s been too close to too many completions, and he hasn’t brought enough bite to 11-on-11 work.
John Harbaugh handled the situation carefully on Saturday before the team left West Virginia.
“I think Paulson’s played well,” Harbaugh said. “There’s so many things that go into it.
It’s training camp. I like all of our corners.
I think the fact that you can even be talking about competition is great, especially at that position, because there’s not too many teams that can have that conversation, really.
“So to me, it makes everybody better,” he added. “I’m looking forward to next week, obviously. Then when the games come, I’m looking forward to seeing how guys look against another team and get a better feel for where you’re at.”
That competition may sound like depth from the outside. Inside the building, it looks more like uncertainty.
The Giants do have one player on the back end who brings some steadiness: safety Jevon Holland, 26. Even there, though, the caveat matters - he needs to keep playing more like he has this August than he did last year.
Beyond Holland, the picture gets muddy fast.
Defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson has shown plenty of press man and seems to want to live there, but zone would become the fallback if his corners can’t hold up in all that one-on-one work. That’s not a comforting option after what the Giants got from Shane Bowen’s zone-heavy approach last season. Banks is also more comfortable in man than in zone, which means the coverage plan could end up changing based on who can survive the assignment.
The ripple effects don’t stop there. Jason Pinnock has taken first-team safety reps from Tyler Nubin, and that’s about both Pinnock making plays and Nubin struggling.
At slot corner, Dru Phillips had already been under pressure from Ar’Darius Washington before a mild right knee sprain sidelined him for a bit. Phillips, 24, was already one of the coverage weak spots last season.
There is at least one encouraging note in the group. Greg Newsome has been steady and flexible through the first couple weeks, even spending more time in the slot recently after arriving as an outside corner. The Giants haven’t tested him a ton, but Newsome said Wilson’s system fits what he likes to do.
“We’re just being aggressive, getting up and challenging people,” Newsome said recently. “I feel like last year, my first six games in Cleveland, that’s what I was asked to do, and I played at a very elite level.”
The challenge now is proving that in games, not just in camp. It also matters where Newsome ends up lining up. If the Giants’ issues in the slot force him inside, that could be a problem since he’s more comfortable outside.
Rookie corner Colton Hood, 21, a second rounder out of Tennessee, has shown attitude, but he’s still in the development stage.
All of this comes with the Giants about to open preseason play Saturday against the Minnesota Vikings at MetLife Stadium. And it also puts a brighter light on the draft Harbaugh just ran in April, when he leaned toward size and strength in the middle of the field rather than making a major push to fix the secondary.
He took Ohio State linebacker Arvell Reese at No. 5 overall, right before the Kansas City Chiefs grabbed LSU corner Mansoor Delane at No. 6.
Then Harbaugh went with Miami right tackle Francis Mauigoa at No. 10, one pick before Ohio State safety Caleb Downs went to the Dallas Cowboys at No. 11.
Reese has been excellent early in camp, and Mauigoa gives the Giants size and versatility up front. Those picks may work out just fine. But it’s also easy to see how Delane and Downs could have helped this defense.
Downs will get an immediate spotlight in Week 1, when he faces the Giants in his NFL debut on Sunday Night Football.
For now, though, the Giants need the players already here to clean this up. Adebo carries a team-high $24.1 million salary cap hit this season, and he’s one of three players in the secondary with major cap numbers, along with Holland and Newsome. He’s supposed to be the shutdown No. 1 corner, and he knows last season wasn’t good enough.
“Overall, not good enough, regardless of whatever circumstance is going on,” Adebo said recently.
His start with Harbaugh wasn’t ideal, either. The coach called him out for missing the beginning of the Giants’ voluntary offseason program, the same period when Dexter Lawrence was also absent while he pushed for a trade to Cincinnati.
Asked why he wasn’t there with the rest of the team, Adebo said: “I think we always have personal stuff that’s going on, so I had something that I was dealing with,” he said. “So it wasn’t too much to that… We all have personal stuff that people are going through, so if that’s what I’m going through, I can’t really help it.”
What he can control now is what happens on the field. The Giants need Adebo and Holland to become weekly anchors on the back end, because right now there aren’t many reliable answers in the secondary.
And with the Cowboys and L.A. Rams waiting right out of the gate, they need those answers quickly.
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