New York Giants Need to Unleash Explosive Deep Passing Game

The New York Giants’ 2024 season is four weeks old and has not quite gone how anyone hoped, particularly on offense.

The Giants’ offense is ranked 22nd overall through four games, averaging 296.8 yards per game. The rushing offense is ranked 30th (85.3 yards per game), and the passing offense is ranked 16th (211.5 yards).

To the casual observer, the Giants’ offensive identity is a mess. Still, receiver Darius Slayton offered an optimistic picture when asked about the unit’s emerging identity. 

“I think we’ve done a consistent job of moving the ball over the past three weeks. I think outside of game one,” he said Monday. “We’ve gotten into scoring positions fairly consistently. We just haven’t been able to finish in the red zone like we wanted to, obviously, this last game, specifically.”

Slayton’s attempt to find a silver lining in the clouds is admirable, but it rings hollow among the paying customers who are expecting a lot more than an average of 15 points per game, with two such games resulting in zero touchdowns.

One of the reasons for that is the Giants have mostly gone with a dink-and-dunk type of offense.

The Giants’ inability to finish scoring drives is undoubtedly something the coaching staff has looked closely at during this mini-bye. New York has converted 35.71% of its third-down attempts, tied for 22nd. They are also tied for 17th in red zone conversion rate (50%) and are ranked 26th in goal-to-go situations (57.14%).

While one can easily point to execution as the problem, the Giants’ struggles to run the ball consistently have left it up to the passing game to carry the load. And despite the presence of rookie sensation Malik Nabers in that passing offense, the Giants just haven’t been able to get it done. 

“I think we’ve wanted to hit some more explosive, bigger plays maybe,” Slayton said. “We’ve hit a couple of them, obviously could have hit more, but we’ve done a good job of being efficient, moving the chains and sustaining drives.”

But again, not good enough.

One issue has been the lack of explosive plays. Per Pro Football Focus, quarterback Daniel Jones has completed three of 15 pass plays of 20+ yards for 92 yards and one interception despite having 3.57 average seconds to throw on those deep attempts. With one dropped pass nestled in the attempts, Jones has a 24.9 passer rating on deep pass attempts.

Getting the deep ball going is still a priority for the Giants.  

“Yeah, I think we’ve tried to get the shots up,” Slayton said. “We’ve gotten them up a couple of times; we just haven’t converted them at as high of a clip as we would want to.

“The reality of deep shots is you only hit – everybody hits a small percentage of them anyways. They’re not easy plays to complete, but obviously, we’d like to have completed more than we have to this point,” he added. 

According to NexGen Stats, 9.7% of Jones’s pass attempts this season have been 20+ yards. Per Pro Football Focus, Jones and the Giants are ranked 21st out of 22 quarterbacks who have attempted at least ten deep passes this season. 

To Slayton’s point about teams hitting a small percentage of deep passes, Sam Darnold of the Vikings currently leads that sample size with a 61.5% completion rate and is tied with Kyler Murray of the Cardinals for most touchdowns (3) coming on the deep ball.  

Matthew Stafford of the Rams and Aaron Rodgers of the Jets are the only other quarterbacks in that PFF sample size to have completed at least 50% of their deep pass attempts.  

The Giants have been leaning primarily on Malik Nabers, who has been targeted on 17.3% of the deep pass attempts, and he’s delivered. Throws to Nabers are averaging 10.1 air yards per target, second behind Slayton’s 12.6.

The key takeaway is that no one should expect the Giants to go deep on every pass play. Still, based on the stats, improvement is needed so that the Giants can avoid falling into the “death by a thousand papercuts” rut they have been stuck in so far this season.