The Giants have reached a strange new place with Deonte Banks: after months of looking like a possible casualty, he’s suddenly one of the few corners they can’t afford to lose.
That’s the backdrop after New York added Ugochukwu Amadi and Sam Webb on Thursday, a move driven by a cornerback room that has been thinned out by injuries and roster churn. The timing matters, too, with the Giants set to open their preseason Saturday against the Minnesota Vikings.
Banks’ path to this point has been a rough one. For three years, he has looked lost in the Giants’ secondary, struggling to turn his head around and giving up big plays.
General manager Joe Schoen took heat for trading up to grab him 24th overall in 2023, and Banks was barely hanging onto a roster spot last year. Schoen kept him around anyway, as he does with most of his draft picks, and even turned him into a glorified kick returner.
Banks made that role count by taking one 95 yards to the house against the Raiders in Week 17.
That still wasn’t the kind of player New York envisioned when it spent a first-round pick on him, which is why the team declined his fifth-year option earlier this offseason. But the arrival of head coach John Harbaugh and defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson has changed the feel around him completely. Wilson has seemingly unlocked Banks, and this summer he has looked like a different player.
Now the Giants need that version of him more than ever.
The injury list has piled up fast: Paulson Adebo is out with an undisclosed injury, Greg Newsome II is missing team drills because of an ongoing knee issue, and Dru Phillips has been sidelined by a minor knee sprain for the past week. Jarrick Bernard-Converse and D.J. James were waived with injury designations, and David Long was also released.
So Schoen is shuffling the bottom of the roster just to keep the room afloat. Amadi, an undersized safety/nickel defensive back, won a Super Bowl with the Kansas City Chiefs in 2022.
Webb is an outside corner who spent last season with the Cleveland Browns. Both are expected to get thrown into the mix right away and could see action Saturday.
It’s a wild turn when you think about where Banks was a few months ago, when plenty of people assumed he was on his way out. Instead, the Giants are signing bodies to help protect him in a preseason game that doesn’t count.
That doesn’t erase three uneven seasons, and Banks still has a lot to prove when the games matter. But for now, he’s gone from expendable to essential almost overnight.
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