Can the 2024 Giants be a good football team?

Quarterback Daniel Jones insisted this week that the 0-2 New York Giants are, or at least can be, a good football team.

“I think everyone realizes our record. I think everybody understands that, but no one’s discouraged or no one’s letting that affect our preparation and how hard we work going into the game,” Jones said. “There’s a great energy and feel in the building still, and I think that that’s important and important to our preparation, important to our process and making sure we’re practicing well and preparing to play well. We know the record, but it’s a long season, and we’ve got a good football team.”

Are they, though? Or, is there at least in opportunity that they can be the good football team Jones and others claim they believe they are?

“It’s going to get better. Right now, it’s just rough,” defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence said. “These two games, you can’t compare this season to last season. It’s a whole new team. A lot of new players. A couple new staff. It’s just a little growing pain through these first two weeks.”

It is, though, getting late early for these Giants. At least if they want to be relevant during the current season. Maybe over the course of the next 15 games the Giants will continue to get better. Maybe they won’t be as bad as the first two games — a blowout loss to the Minnesota Vikings and a game against the Washington Commanders that typified a bad team finding a way to beat itself — lead many to believe the season might be.

The Giants, though, desperately need a victory on Sunday if they are going to play any meaningful games over the remaining 15 weeks of the season. Fall to 0-3, the remainder of the year is most likely about figuring out what the 2025 Giants look like.

“Wins create juice,” linebacker Micah McFadden said this week.

The Giants’ season needs some juice. As ugly as things were three plays into the season opener against the Minnesota Vikings, it could be worse at MetLife Stadium on Thursday night if the Giants enter that nationally-televised game at 0-3.

The game against the favored Browns — who will be at home and feature a top-notch defense — will be difficult for the Giants. Our entire staff has abandoned ship, picking the Browns to win and sink the Giants deeper into their misery.

There are some reasons for optimism. Which, let’s acknowledge, might all get blown to smithereens with a bad performance Sunday in Ohio. Let’s go through them.

2024 rookie class

Accepted NFL doctrine is that it takes three seasons to fully judge a draft class. I believe that to be correct. Still, after just two weeks it is plain to see that this rookie class could be transformative for the Giants.

• First-round pick Malik Nabers is special. His receiver Expected Points Added (EPA) is third in the league, per NextGen Stats.

The Browns know:

“He’s a great player,” Cleveland cornerback Denzel Ward said of Nabers. “Gets a lot of targets on their team, good after the catch, got good hands.”

“He’s very, very fast. He’s explosive,” head coach Kevin Stefanski said of the rookie receiver. “There’s a reason he was drafted where he was drafted. He’s a very, very, very good young player.”

• Second-round pick Tyler Nubin, whom the Giants believe will become the leader of their secondary, is starting at safety and playing solidly.
• Third-round pick Dru Phillips has gotten attention for his instincts and his physicality from the slot cornerback position.
• Fourth-round pick Theo Johnson had a rough opening week and has only one reception in two games. What the Giants think of him is obvious, though, as he has pushed Daniel Bellinger — a good player — to the bench.
• There is tremendous optimism about the future of Tyrone Tracy, the running back selected in the fifth round. Tracy has barely played, getting only 27 snaps over two games, but the belief here is that his role is going to expand.
• Linebacker Darius Muasau, the sixth-round pick, was impressive in Week 1 before sitting out Week 2 with a knee injury. If he becomes more than a useful special teams player, that is a win.

If the Giants get a superstar receiver and three to four building-block players out of this class, that would be a tremendous haul.

Offensive line performance

The Giants offensive line is … good? Or, at least good enough? Does the NFL allow the Giants to possess a line that can be thought of that way?

• Pro Football Focus grades the Giants as the league’s sixth-best pass-blocking team after two weeks. No, that is not a typo. PFF does grade the line 30th in run-blocking, but the Giants did open enough holes for Devin Singletary to run 16 times for 95 yards in Week 2.
• The Giants have allowed six sacks in two games, a pace that would have them at 51 for the season. That’s a lot better than the 85 allowed last year. The team sack rate allowed of 7.9% is 17th in the NFL, per NextGen Stats.
• Per NextGen, Daniel Jones has been pressured on 32.9% of his dropbacks. That is 13th-most in the league. Pretty much average — a huge improvement from 2023.

“I feel good about the progress that we’ve made over the first two games, but to be named a great offensive line or a good offensive line, you have to do it consistently,” said left tackle Andrew Thomas. “We’re just approaching this week as another opportunity to get better, protect DJ (Daniel Jones), and open up run lanes.”

Through two games, Thomas is Pro Football Focus’s highest-graded pass blocker. Thomas is eighth overall and Jermaine Eluemunor 51st overall among 91 qualifiers. Perhaps most encouragingly, second-year center John Michael Schmitz is grading middle of the pack (No. 21 of 31 qualifiers) with a 60.4 overall grade. That is nearly 20 points higher than his 41.4 a season ago.

Left guard Jon Runyan Jr. has been a Schmitz supporter since the spring.

“He’s the one that’s in charge of pretty much directing this whole offense, him and Daniel (Jones). We go up there to the line and everybody’s got their eyes on him. Everybody’s listening to what he’s got to say and helping us out and getting us going in the right direction and he’s always on top of his stuff,” Runyan said. “Nothing really fazes him and doing a good job in the run and pass game. It starts with him and getting everybody going to the right people. He’s been doing a good job and he’s been on top of everything.”

The Giants have a huge challenge this week against Myles Garrett, Za’Darius Smith and the rest of Cleveland’s impressive front seven.

It seems weird to enter a game against a good defensive line thinking the Giants might actually have a chance to hold their own at the line of scrimmage.

The NFC East ain’t great

Look at the division standings. The Philadelphia Eagles, Dallas Cowboys, and Washington Commanders are all 1-1. Look at the way each team has played over the season’s first two weeks. None, honestly, should be crowing about how great they have been. All are flawed.

Look at the Week 3 schedule:

Those three games could all easily be losses for the NFC East teams.

If the Giants can win on Sunday there is a possibility that there is a four-way tie in the NFC East at 1-2 entering Thursday’s game against Dallas. That’s not fantastic, but it is at least something to be optimistic about entering Week 3.

Final thoughts

There are plenty of things to worry about with the 2024 Giants — I haven’t covered the first two games with blinders on. It is certainly possible that a few days from now the Giants are 0-4 and yet another Giants season will be in the dumpster.

These, though, are some of the things fans can — and should — feel good about. Of course, no one will feel good about anything if the Giants are 0-3 by late Sunday afternoon.