Where Giants Defense Needs to Improve

The Giants defense has been slow out of the starting gate this season. Here are some areas the unit will need to improve to rise to the competition still ahead. You must have been practicing!

Throughout his short day-after conference call with reporters on Friday morning, a tired-sounding New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll repeated the same message about having a lot of work to do to improve a football team off to a 1-2 start.

The work that needs to be done spans all three units of this Giants team, but for this analysis, we will look at the defense, which we view as the biggest problem thus far through three games.

The Giants defense is ranked 24th in the league, allowing an average of 361.7 yards per game. It has yet to come up with an interception, and its sack percentage rate is an underwhelming 2.15 percent, 30th in the league, the Giants not recording a sack until their third game of the season.

One of the most glaring stats of all? The Giants rank dead last in point differential with a minus 18.3 mark.

Yep, there's still a lot of work to do by this Giants team, particularly its defense, on which we'll focus in this breakdown.

Missed Tackles

People will consider the 29 missed tackles a major cause for alarm. To be fair, it's not a stat that exactly screams of a well-oiled defensive machine, but this number is skewed given the Giants are only one of two teams that have played three games as of this writing while the rest of the league (sans the 49ers) has played two.

Still, not far off from the Giants' total (despite having played two games as of this writing) are the Bears (26) and Lions (24), each of whom plays Sunday.

This is a big problem indeed, and one I'm not really sure how they fix since they don't tackle during the off-season, they don't really tackle in training camp, and they don't tackle during the season in practice.

Penalties

Per ESPN's Stats & Info, the Giants defense is tied with the Denver Broncos for giving up the most first downs (10) by penalty.

While some of the Giants' defensive penalties are judgment calls, such as holding and pass interference, there are a few discipline-related penalties in the group, including roughing the passer (2), unnecessary roughness (2), delay of game (1) and too many men on the field (1) that are among the many things this defense needs to clean up.

Run Defense

One area where the Giants' defense has picked up where it left off last year--and not in a good way-- has been its run defense.

The Giants' run defense is currently giving up 138 rushing yards per game, 26th in the league, and an average of 4.22 yards per rushing play, 19th in the league. Those figures are slightly better than how they finished the 2022 season (144.2 yards per game, 27th, and 5.23 yards per play, 31st), but still aren't good enough.

These struggles against the run aren't helping out an otherwise young defensive backfield that's still trying to cut its teeth to the regular-season speed of the passing game.

• RELATED: Breaking Down Giants OLB Kayvon Thibodeaux's Week 2 Film

 Turnovers

The Giants are one of five teams that, as of the day before the rest of the league plays its Week 3 games, has yet to record an interception. (The others are Chicago, Kansas City, Las Vegas, and the Rams.) This problem has continued since last year when they tied for last with the Raiders with six interceptions.

The Giants have yet to record a fumble recovery, one of nine teams with a goose egg in this category. But combine the lack of turnovers with the offense having turned the ball over five times, and you have the league's 31st worst turnover differential at minus-5, the Vikings at minus-6 being at the bottom.

For a team that spent quite a bit of time working on ball-stripping drills during training camp, that this unit has yet to record a takeaway is perplexing.

• RELATED: In Search of the New York Giants Pass Rush

Third Down

Last year, the Giants defense was one of the best at situational football, such as third down conversion percentage, where they finished fifth in the league (35.12 percent).

This year, the Giants have struggled to get off the field on third down, allowing a 48.72 percent conversion rate to opponents, ranking them 26th in the league.

Against the 49ers, the Giants allowed 56.3% of the third down attempts to be converted, including a pair where they had San Francisco with third and forever. At no point thus far this season has the Giants defense allowed less than a 40 percent third-down conversion rate, that coming in the prior game against the Arizona Cardinals when the Giants seemed to wake up and play better ball.

Final Thoughts

What makes the Giants defensive performance so alarming is that the majority of the core from last year--linemen Dexter Lawrence and Leonard Williams, safety Xavier McKinney, cornerback Adoree Jackson, and outside linebackers Azeez Ojualri and Kayvon Thibodeaux--are in Year 2 of this system.

The Giants also upgraded at inside linebacker with the addition of Bobby Okereke, at safety with Jason Pinnock, and cornerback with Deonte Banks and Tre Hawkins.

So why they don't have enough to show for it through three games is a mystery. Again, some will point to the schedule--three games in 12 days is a bear, but then again, the 49ers had the same arrangement, and they're 3-0. Some might say that the defense didn't play enough together in the preseason when the tempo is much faster than what can be simulated in practice.

Some might point to the players' effort as not yet being to the level of physicality needed to impose their will on opponents--that they're lacking that "dawg" mentality.

Whatever the reason(s), the Giants better figure it out quickly before this season slips away. 

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