Why Giants DB Coach Jerome Henderson Isn’t Giving Up on Deonte Banks

Deonte Banks's effort has been inconsistent these last few games, but his position coach explained why no one is ready to toss the talented younng man aside.

Jul 25, 2024; East Rutherford, NY, USA; New York Giants cornerback Deonte Banks (3) reacts during training camp at Quest Diagnostics Training Center. / Lucas Boland-Imagn Images

New York Giants passing game coordinator/defensive backs coach Jerome Henderson believes in second-year cornerback Deonte Banks.

He believes in the struggling cornerback so much that Henderson, who personally banged the table for Banks during the 2023 NFL Draft so much so that the team traded up one spot to select him 24th overall, is pained by what he has seen as far as the young man’s struggles against the league’s top receivers this season.

“I raised my hand and said, yes, draft him, I want him, I love him,” Henderson said Friday. “When that happened to him, it happened to me as well. We’re tied at the hip, he and I.”  

That’s why when Banks doesn’t deliver a performance that Henderson, himself a former NFL defensive back, knows he’s capable of delivering, he takes it personally.

“We have great expectations, obviously, for Tae. We drafted him in the first round. I personally went to visit him, spent time with him, came back here, talked to [general manager] Joe [Schoen], talked to [head coach] Dabs [Brian Daboll], and thought that he and I would do well together. I’m as invested in him doing well as anybody.”

Banks’s on-field problems have extended beyond his play. Midway through the 2024 season, he has allowed 65.9% of the pass targets against him to be completed for 385 yards and four touchdowns (128.6 coverage rating)—a far cry from his rookie campaign, in which he only allowed 57.6% of the passes against him to be completed for 644 yards and four touchdowns (84.7 rating) all season.

There has also been questionable effort, or rather lack of effort at times, which has led to Banks being called out by Henderson after the Dallas game when the former Maryland star gave a poor effort on a 55-yard touchdown catch by receiver CeeDee Lamb that prompted Henderson to say he didn’t like a single thing about the play.

It continued, albeit under the radar, against Cincinnati and then again came to a head against the Eagles, a game in which Henderson said that Banks probably would have been benched had the Giants not been so banged up at cornerback.

Still, even after Banks’s teammates intervened with an attempt to get through to him about giving full effort on every play (prompting Banks to vow that his lack of effort “would never happen again”), the problem continued in the Giants' most recent game, a loss to the Steelers on Monday night which led to his benching in the second half of that game.

“There were multiple things and reasons, and at the end of it again, we expect more. And I expect more from me, too. It’s not just him,” Henderson said about the benching. 

“Just didn’t feel he has consistently played up the organization's expectations for him,” Henderson said when asked why Banks was benched. “Wanted to get his attention that we expect more.

“The thing is he’s played well in spurts, but what he has to understand and what I know is there’s 64 plays in a game. Let’s say there are 58 of them where you do a great job nobody notices, but there’s those other six or seven where now that’s all you’re judged on, those plays when the ball is at me, and I have an opportunity to make a play. Want to see him in those moments, be brighter, be bigger. That’s why we drafted him.

“That’s what I know he has in him, and I want him to do it consistently and at a high level all the time, and he has it in him to do it, and it’s my job to get it out of him.”

Henderson isn’t certain if Banks has finally got the message, but he certainly is hopeful that is the case because the coaches feel that having Banks on the field gives them the best chance to win.

“We’ll see. I hope he does,” Henderson said. “We’re going to try our best this week to go out and play our best game. All of us are going to try to do that, and hopefully, this is the week where we do that. We’re going to ask him to step up and be big for us.

“My hope is that he and I look back at this moment one day in the future and see the growth that came from it and where he goes after this point because of taking something away from him,” he added.

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