How Giants Can Potentially Optimize the Passing Offense in 2024

Incorporating more pre-snap motion could be just what the doctor ordered to help the Giants get the most out of their passing offense.

Jul 26, 2024; East Rutherford, NJ, USA; New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones (8) passes during training camp at Quest Diagnostics Training Center. / Lucas Boland-USA TODAY Sports

Although not officially announced, New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll has taken over the play calling for an offense that lagged in production last year. However, it now has all kinds of crazy speed among its receiving corps, waiting to be unleashed on opposing defenses.

But all that speed and talent is useless if the offensive line doesn’t block and the quarterbacks can’t push the ball down the field.

To help with the process, Daboll has been incorporating pre-snap motion throughout the spring and summer, which can benefit quarterbacks in determining what the defense might be planning to do. This, in turn, allows for adjustments to be made before the snap, be it blocking or where the quarterback plans to go with the ball. 

“With pre-snap motions, one of the biggest tells is man-zone,” quarterback Drew Lock explained. “If you send a guy from the right to the left, and a single guy follows him, then it’s more than likely going to be man (coverage). 

“A lot of plays have man beaters and zone beaters in our offense. If I know it's man (coverage), I'm gonna pick out my favorite route.  

“If we know it’s zone, we’re probably not gonna get a blitz, so I'm going to be able to take my normal drop, feel good about just four, maybe five guys rushing, and look to pick apart a zone defense.” 

A shift is a little different in that one or more players will change their position before the snap, thus changing the formation. For example, an offense might initially line up in the I-formation but then shift one of those players out of the I-formation up closer to the line of scrimmage.

According to Sports Info Solutions, during his time as the Bills offensive coordinator, Daboll didn’t run pre-snap motion that heavily until his third season (2020), when he ran it on 41 percent of the plays (21st in the league). 

But the Bills' passing offense finished third in the league that year (288.8 yards/game) and suffered a 4.53 percent sack rate, seventh in the league. Quarterback Josh Allen enjoyed a 48 percent success rate when using pre-snap motion, the best of his career with Daboll as his play-caller. 

Allen also notched some career-highs during that 2020 season, including completion percentage (69.2 percent), passing yards (4,544), and touchdowns (37). 

In the two seasons under Daboll, the Giants have run pre-snap motion significantly more than what was run in Buffalo, with offensive coordinator Mike Kafka, who came from an offensive system (Kansas City/Andy Reid) that is among the league leaders in running pre-snap motion, calling the plays. 

In 2022, quarterback Daniel Jones’s best season since his rookie campaign, the Giants, per SIS,  ran pre-snap motion on 39 percent of the plays (23rd) with an impressive 46 percent success rate (9th). 

Last year, given the quarterback shuffling due to injuries, the Giants ran pre-snap motion on 47 percent of the plays (21st) with just a 36 percent success rate (30th). 

Daboll, notoriously secretive about his game-planning tendencies, wasn’t willing to discuss the possibility of running more pre-snap motion this year to help Jones, who has historically had a slow processing time. 

“We've used plays with motion, we've used plays with shifts, we've been stationary,” he said. “That's what you do this time of year: work on plays, see how they look and keep developing it as it goes. Then, as you get into training camp, try to identify what you need to be and see how the guys pick it up and how fast they can do it.

“You try to put as much pressure defensively in a variety of ways, whether it's tempo, whether it's shifts, whether it's motions, whether it's different personnel groups.”

Lock said that pre-snap motion and shifts aren’t practical to run on every play, just as it’s not practical to run the hurry-up offense on every play despite the advantages it offers a quarterback.

“It’s all a big chess game,” Lock said. “It’s going to vary according to who we’re playing, the situation at the time, and so forth. But yes, pre-snap motion can definitely help in trying to see what the defense is setting up to do.

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