Giants Open at No. 29 in SI.com’s Power Rankings

There's not a lot of optimism for the Giants to open the regular season despite the new coaching staff.

The NFL team records are all identical at 0-0, and for many teams, they have some new faces replacing those who have since moved on to other teams.

But when it comes to MMQB’s preseason power rankings, some things haven’t changed.

The MMQB crew has the New York Giants ranked 29th ahead of Kickoff Weekend. The Giants, who earned 40 points in the poll and received a vote for No. 20, finished last season ranked dead last in the year-end power ranking poll, so the Week 1 ranking represents a slight hint of optimism that things will be better.

But we digress. According to the MMQB crew, their concern behind the Giants’ low ranking is quarterback Daniel Jones, of whom they write:

Daniel Jones looks to be getting his last chance to prove he can be a long-term answer for the Giants, now auditioning for Brian Daboll, his third coach in four years.

Jones looked good in the preseason in the new offense, but to be transparent, much of that has come against the opponents' second-team defense.

That said, a bigger concern for the Giants, besides the injury bug ripping through the team again, is the defensive secondary, where the salary cap forced purge of cornerback James Bradberry prompted the team to try second-year cornerback Aaron Robinson opposite of Adoree’ Jackson.

The results weren’t good. Robinson finished the preseason with a 95.8 coverage rating—not the worst on the team, but not great.

But in getting back to Jones, it’s not too hard to see why he might be a focal point of this weekend’s game, especially if the Titans run defense pics up where it left off and stifles running back Saquon Barkley’s attempts to get back to his 2018 self.

If that happens, Jones could be forced to beat the Titans by throwing to receivers he didn’t throw to much in the preseason games. Those include Kenny Golladay (three targets), Wan’Dale Robinson (zero targets), Sterling Shepard (zero targets), and Kadarius Toney (zero targets). If that is the plan, will Jones be on the same page with those receivers when the game tempo cranks up tenfold from what they ran in practice?

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