Revealing PFF's Ranking of the New York Giants Roster Ahead of 2021 Season

Pro Football Focus recently ranked all 32 NFL rosters ahead of the start of the 2021 season, and the Giants' ranking is encouraging.

Based on the off-season moves made by New York Giants general manager Dave Gettleman and the rest of the front office, there’s no question that the Giants have their collective eye firmly on earning its first postseason berth since 2017.

But despite adding play-makers like receivers Kenny Golladay and Kadarius Toney, and tight end Kyle Rudolph, and upgrading the defense with cornerback Adoree Jackson and edge Azeez Ojulari, the Giants roster earned a middle-of-the-pack ranking from Pro Football Focus’s Ben Linsey in his review of every team’s strengths, weaknesses, and X-factors.

Linsey, who ranked the Giants roster at No. 19, noted that the biggest strength of the Giants roster as currently constructed is the defensive secondary.

It's difficult to dispute this selection. The upgrades made to the Giants defensive secondary now allow for defensive coordinator Patrick Graham to deploy more man coverage than the estimated 32% he ran last year.

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The addition of cornerback Aaron Robinson, the team’s third-round draft pick, gives the Giants another solid option for the slot and one whose 6’1” size is a better matchup against opponents who put a taller receiver or tight end in the slot.

Linsey named the Giants offensive line as the biggest weakness, noting:

As a franchise, you always want to put your young quarterback in a position to succeed early in his NFL career. The Giants have at least added play-makers such as Kenny Golladay and Kadarius Toney to Jones' receiving corps this offseason, but the offensive line remains an area of concern. Andrew Thomas was the only projected starter on the unit to earn a PFF grade above 60.0 on at least 200 snaps last season. And he was still a bottom-10 graded left tackle in the league. New York needs big leaps from several of their younger players there.

While I’m not a fan of solely relying on PFF’s grades as a measuring stick for anything, Linsey’s point is still well taken. 

The Giants have a young offensive line that last year was inconsistent and struggled at times with pass protection. Among their most significant issues was picking up stunts. 

The team released veteran Kevin Zeitler and is prepared to roll with young players, the most senior being guard Will Hernandez, who enters his fourth season as a potential starter. But even Hernandez has a challenge ahead of him in that it looks like he’ll be trying to earn his keep by switching from left guard to right guard.

The good news for the Giants offensive line is that head coach Joe Judge has stabilized the coaching of this unit. Rob Sale is the new offensive line coach, and he’ll be assisted by former NFL offensive lineman Ben Wilkerson and Tom Coughlin’s Giants offensive line coach, Pat Flaherty. 

That all being said, the unit still needs to put in the work and show the results, but the team seems confident of that happening, especially with it entering Year 2 of this offense.

The X-factor, according to Linsey, is Ojulari, of whom he wrote:

Azeez Ojulari, a rookie out of Georgia, has an opportunity to assuage some of the concerns regarding the edge defender talent on this defense. The Giants' top-four pressure producers a season ago all played on the interior. That is unusual, to say the least. Ojulari will look to change that. He showed arguably the best cornering ability in this draft class and earned a 91.7 pass-rushing grade for the Bulldogs in 2020.

Here's where I would disagree. The X-factor in my mind is quarterback Daniel Jones, a player who no longer has any excuses not to raise his performance level. Jones had to operate with an inconsistent offensive line that twice underwent renovations, a lack of play-makers at the receiver and tight end spots, and chunks of time without his top running back, Saquon Barkley.

While Jones has all that in place now, the big thing with him will come down to two key aspects. The first is ball security. Jones has been a turnover machine, partly due to sloppiness with handling the ball and partly due to his inability to know when to give up on a play that’s simply not there.

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The other part is Jones’s mental processing. A common problem in each of his first two seasons was that he often held onto the ball much too long, as though he wasn’t trusting what he was seeing.

To be fair, Pat Shurmur’s system was different than what Jones ran at Duke, and Jason Garrett’s system different than what Shurmur ran.

Now that Jones is in Year 2 of the same system—the first time since his Duke days he’s been in the same offensive system—the expectation is that he’ll be more comfortable to the point where he’ll be able to play faster.

Jones’s ability to process what he’s seeing and play faster, by the way, will help the offensive line out with its pass protection in that the unit won’t have to hold its blocks beyond the 2.5-second mark.

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