Examining the Early Impact of the New York Giants Rookie Class

A look at how most of the Giants rookie class impacts the on-field results.

Sep 26, 2024; East Rutherford, NJ, US; New York Giants wide receiver Malik Nabers (1) walks onto the field prior to the start of the game at MetLife Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Julian Guadalupe-NorthJersey.com / Julian Leshay Guadalupe/NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The New York Giants came into the 2024 season eyeing a youth movement for their roster overhaul, and the early impact of this year’s draft class seems to signal something special brewing in East Rutherford. 

Rather than spend tons of money on high-profile veterans, general manager Joe Schoen used the team’s funds to hunker down the starting offensive line while deploying the Giants’ small pool of draft picks on quality prospects that could produce early at premium positions. 

After putting together what many deemed a disappointing group in the 2023 class, the strategy seems to have yielded promising results this season. The Giants' current core of novices have been getting valuable reps within their respective units and turning them into noteworthy efforts bolstering gridiron success. 

When examining their numbers in the first five weeks, the evidence reveals a nice mix of solid offensive playmakers and future defensive centerpieces. According to PFF’s premium stats and player grades, New York’s newest names touch everything from deep concepts to isolating man coverages at levels that stand atop the competition, including top-10 for rookies and veterans in select categories.

There have certainly been some road bumps along the way, but the Giants are starting to play winning football, and it’s been largely a result of the contributions of their rookies. If they keep it up alongside the experienced veterans up front, it could lead to a brighter campaign and future that nobody expected from the franchise coming out of the summer. 

For now, the Giants are sitting at 2-3 and have to feel good about what they are building with the newest guys in their locker room. So here is a more detailed peek at the early impacts of the 2024 class and where they are empowering the organization towards competitiveness again. 

R1. WR Malik Nabers 

While it doesn’t come as a surprise, wide receiver Malik Nabers has been the most impactful Giants rookie since the sixth overall pick stepped foot in East Rutherford during the spring. 

With his blend of athleticism and ball recognition, Nabers has taken the field by storm and electrified the Giants passing attack as their long-awaited No. 1 option. In his first four games this season, the LSU product has quickly amassed a league-high 35 receptions for 386 yards and three touchdowns, notching an average of 95.6 yards per contest in the same span. 

Nabers has recently missed some time with a concussion and will not clear the protocol in time for Sunday’s game against Cincinnati. Still, his early performances have already touched the record books and placed him among elite receiving company in the NFL. 

In just three weeks, he’s already become the fastest wideout to 20 catches and three touchdowns and holds more total production than five of the players that finished in last year’s top-10 at the position. 

Looking more broadly, Nabers has been blowing most of his rookie competition out of the water in all the basic receiving categories, including targets, receptions, yards, and touchdowns, where he is positioned third or better. The one area where he sets himself apart and provides the greatest impact is the deep passing game, where he stretches his routes beyond 20 yards from the line of scrimmage. 

From the moment he arrived at MetLife Stadium, the Giants have wanted to deploy Nabers as a vertical threat that could test the opposing secondary and make the offense explosive again. The plan has worked well, as breaking the interior of the defense has produced a 43.2 percent chunk of the rookie pass catcher’s debut resume. 

Per PFF metrics, Nabers has been targeted at distances 10 yards or greater on 22 of his 35 targets, 11 coming beyond 20 yards from the play's origin. He has caught 10 of those throws for a 45.5 percent completion rate and turned them into 180 yards of offense and two touchdowns with an average haul between 12.6 and 30.7 yards.

The damage Nabers creates doesn’t end where he initially catches the football. In that same span, he also averages as high as 7.7 yards after the catch per reception, which is largely helped by the 8.36 yards per route run and the 12.5 to 28.2-yard average distance of target that he uses to establish separation from the cornerback in zone coverage. 

While he has proven he can do it all over the field, Nabers has more prominently left his impact from the left sideline and center region between the numbers. The 21-year-old’s work in these areas has amounted to 10 catches on 19 targets for 182 yards, two touchdowns, and 43 yards after the catch. It can just as easily be switched to the other side, making him a problem for defenders who try to limit him to the short field in non-press schemes. 

In the aforementioned stats for concept passing, Nabers holds rankings ranging as high as third among veterans and sole possession of first among his rookie counterparts. If he keeps it up, Nabers will continue becoming one of the rare vertical superstars who are hard to stop in any offense and have carried the best teams to promise down the road.

It’s clear the Giants have something of that nature brewing within their young stud, and that should create excitement. He is one of one, and if kept uncontained, he could help the offense further dominate vertically once he returns to full health, hopefully in the following week.

R2. SAF Tyler Nubin

When the Giants lost Xavier McKinney to free agency, they needed a new leader to step in and assume his role as one of the best all-around ballhawks in the NFL. It’s still rounding into form, but they might get that from one of their notable draft selections in Tyler Nubin. 

After being taken in the second round from Minnesota, Nubin has been thrown into immediate contributions for the Giants defense from the free safety position. The 23-year-old has been splitting reps with veteran Jason Pinnock in the deep secondary but has already tallied over 300 snaps, including 198 in coverage, and shown flashes of the versatile athlete that New York has craved in their unit.

Through five games of the regular season, Nubin has gotten involved in both man and zone coverage looks with a 65.1 grade that sits ninth on the Giants’ defense. He is also tied for second on the team leaderboard and is first in the safeties room with 30 total tackles, one tackle for loss, and one forced fumble with recovery in that span.

As a zone guy, Nubin has fared pretty well by playing in a system that is friendly to his attributes and the secondary at large, finishing in the top-10 of novice safeties in snaps (198), targets (6), coverage yards (66) and yards after the catch (15) while needing improvements in his opponent’s reception percentage and average distance of target allowed. 

However, he has been one of the most talented young players in the league in terms of slowing down the opposition in man coverage. Per PFF, he ranks in the top 15 and leads the entire rookie class in snaps from the scheme, and has limited his matchups to some of the lowest production this season.

In the Shane Bowen system Nubin has grown in, the cornerbacks and safeties are sometimes called to play as underneath defenders to help with select assignments or the run game. That has been a specialty for the second-round pick, who has played with the perfect mix of aggressiveness and solid tackling to limit damage in the defense's interior. 

In his 57 snaps in man schemes, Nubin has only two targets for 10 yards and a measly three yards after the catch. He has also been clean with his tackling with no missed takedowns to his name, and has kept opponents clear of the endzone under his watch. These numbers are enough to have him playing in the top 5 throughout man coverage categories, which is a big plus for the Giants' decision to draft him. 

If he can just sharpen his game in the zone coverage snaps, where he has allowed a few more receptions and 57 total yards, Nubin could develop into one of the premier safeties that the Giants once enjoyed in McKinney’s services. That has to be a relief for a former guy who is continuing to tear it up outside of the organization.

R3. SCB Dru Phillips

Dru Phillips is another rookie in the Giants class whose season has seen some injury woes. However, unlike Nubin, he has been one of the sharpest zone coverage defenders and was putting together a nice early resume when healthy. 

Phillips, the Giants' third-round pick out of Kentucky, stepped right into the No. 1 slot corner role at the start of the season. In his first three contests, he made 21 total tackles, one sack, and one forced fumble and was doing a solid job of silencing some of the top slot pass catchers in the league.

With his efforts, Phillips was leading the Giants' secondary in overall production and showing promise as a future cornerstone of the defense. He would miss the Giants' next game against Dallas with a calf ailment before returning to action against Seattle and notching another four tackles against the Seahawks’ arsenal of receiving weapons. 

While he has had some work in man coverage, he has not been targeted that much to provide much of an impact. That said, his rankings playing in the zone have been some of the best the NFL has seen from a rookie, including  top-10 in zone grade, targets, receptions, yards, and yards after the catch. 

In his 41 zone coverage snaps, which account for 97.6 percent of his reps, Phillips has the best cornerback grade at 89.2 and seven of his total tackles without any missed takedowns. He also has five stops in that span and is one of only two rookie cornerbacks in the top-15 to be stainless in their tackling. 

Fighting against talented slot threats, Phillips has allowed seven receptions on eight targets, marking him for the fourth-highest opponent percentage allowed. However, it has only translated into 31 yards (4.4 average) and 38 yards after the catch and no wide receiver has completed a catch for more than nine yards with the Kentucky alum on them.

Once Phillips gets back into the full-time groove, the Giants can expect his numbers to improve more and rely on him to make the opposing offense less versatile through the air. The first few games saw him pass with flying colors against the likes of Jordan Addison, Dyami Brown, Elijah Moore, and Tyler Lockett, and in none of the Giants matchups has a player burnt him for more than five catches for 14 yards and 4.6 yards per catch. 

The perimeter continues to be a work in progress, but New York might have hit on a diamond in the rough in Dru Phillips. The next step in that progression begins with staying on the field and adding a press element to his game.

R4. TE Theo Johnson

The story of Theo Johnson has gotten off to a slower start than some fans might have expected, but that’s because of how the Giants have implemented their rookie tight end into the offense. 

In the first few weeks, New York’s tight ends room was more involved in the pass-blocking game, providing extra strength to support the run in heavy packages. As such, Johnson, the fourth-round pick out of Penn State, was seeing a chunk of his reps—as high as 40 percent—go towards being the sixth blocker on the front lines.

Take away those 115 snaps, and Johnson is slowly working his way into the offense’s route tree. His first four contests were fairly quiet, with just three catches for 37 yards and a long catch of 18 yards. Then, the rookie found some action on the road in Seattle, catching a season-high five ball for 48 yards, an average haul of 9.6-yard and a long pass of 22 yards to help the Giants steal a win over the flailing Seahawks. 

In total, Johnson sits at eight receptions on 13 targets for 85 yards and an average of 10.6 yards, which is good for fourth place on the Giants' receiving leaderboard. It’s a stat line that hasn’t been impressive for a guy who was dominant in college and slated to replace Darren Waller’s production in the huddle after the veteran’s retirement over the summer. 

Johnson is starting to percolate in an area of the field that isn’t paid enough attention on Sundays. The 24-year-old is hanging around the top of first-year players in intermediate receiving work at a time when the tight end position is less relied upon in most teams' passing attacks. 

As it stands, Johnson is currently the second-highest rookie tight end in several categories between 10 and 19 yards of the line of scrimmage, including targets, receptions, receiving yards, and an average yards per reception of 20.0 yards. Those numbers combine to an impressive 92.3 PFF grade, which only trails Raiders sensation Brock Bowers’ stellar year with a 92.5 note in the same span. 

In the actual production, Johnson has given the Giants offense two receptions on four targets for 40 yards and 11 yards after the catch, which helped account for two of the team’s first downs. His best display of a midrange game came in the recent win over the Seahawks, posting a near 10-yard average catch that started with an average distance of 4.2 yards per target on routes from the inline and the slot. 

Johnson’s intermediate abilities typically show best when the Giants play him from those spots and get him open over the middle of the field. In his receiving depth tree, he has earned the bulk of his production on the outside left and in between the numbers up to 20 yards distance, where he commonly runs a blend of corner and crossing routes depending on the play call and can catch the football over defenders using his 6-6, 254-pound frame. 

Without Malik Nabers in their back pocket last Sunday, the Giants were forced to seek answers from other members of their receiving corps, and Johnson ended up being one of them. His contributions might offer the team a timely reminder of the skillset that helped him stand out at Penn State, with 938 yards and an average of 12.2 yards per catch, which reeled in 12 scores. 

New York might have a future All-Pro tight end in their mix, and it isn’t wrong to say that he is early in his career. They just need to jumpstart his talents into the offense as the season progresses, and it will add the extra weapon that defenses are hard to account for. It certainly was for Seattle when Daniel Jones looked for Johnson, and the only direction was upward as the rookie got more comfortable with his routes. 

R5. RB Tyrone Tracy Jr.

For the first month of the regular season, Tyrone Tracy Jr. was practically sitting on the shelf behind Devin Singletary as the veteran ate up most of the Giants rushing snaps. Last Sunday, the rookie ball carrier made his official introduction and showed the dual threat type of player he has always been. 

At the college level with Iowa and Purdue, Tracy made a name for himself as a wide receiver, translated into the running back position while maintaining a mixed version of the two intangibles. With a nifty athleticism and bulky 210-pound frame, the 24-year-old pushed his school’s offense to 716 yards and an average of 6.3 yards per carry and added another 132 yards in the air with his eight touchdowns. 

The Giants brought Tracy to the organization to capitalize off those intangibles at a cheaper rate than what they had with Saquon Barkley. The only issue was the rookie’s minuscule usage in New York’s first four contests, where he saw just 15 rushing snaps and 29 yards that barely impacted the game. 

However, that changed in Week 5 against the Seattle Seahawks, when Singletary was out with a groin injury, and his counterpart in Tracy had to step into the starting role. With no idea what to expect, the novice took the bull by the horns and passed his first big rushing test with flying colors, carrying the ball 18 times for 129 yards and commanding a 7.2 yards per rush to assist in the Giants victory. 

Tracy got off to a hot start and never looked back, finding four runs of 10+ yards and two plays of 15 or more that turned into 52 breakaway yards and helped tally five first downs for the offense. His carries touched the gaps and the outside zone as he found his field vision and trusted his blocks to punish a Seattle front banged up with injuries. 

All along that is what the Giants have had lingering on their sidelines waiting for a chance. Tracy now sits at 30 carries for 158 yards and a 5.3 average that is second on the team’s rushing leaderboard, but he could become a consistently successful dual-threat back if he is given enough of the workload to show himself. 

In just one game, Tracy has jumped up the rankings of his position to provide the Giants with a weapon that can compete for one of the top rookie campaigns of the season. He ranks third with a rushing grade of 69.7, behind only Braelon Allen of the Jets and Jaylen Wright of the Dolphins. 

More importantly, he holds some of the best value in his work. Tracy is second in rushing yards and third in average rush among rookies. His 87 yards after contact rank fourth, and have produced a long gash as big as 27 yards and the second-most 10+ runs in the same span.

If Singletary continues to miss time with his ailment, Tracy can continue to earn the starting reps and power the Giants' rushing attack whether they are running inside or outside zone plays. He is now building on top-5 status both inside the trenches and on designed runs, a trend that can make the Giants a stronger two-dimensional offense.

Tracy has the versatility and physicality to get it done in the mud and take it far behind the line of scrimmage into payday that has started to ramp up for New York’s young unit. 

It all depends on opportunity, one that if he gets it, the impact on the rest of the season looks promising.

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