Q&A with Giants writer: What to make of post-Saquon New York, Malik Nabers and more

Training camp season is almost upon us.

With the offseason ticking away, we’ll take a look at how the past few months have unfolded for the Dallas Cowboys’ rivals in the NFC East. To start, we interviewed Giants beat writer Pat Leonard of the New York Daily News to discuss free-agent signings, Saquon Barkley’s departure and more.

Here’s what Leonard had to say about the Giants’ offseason, edited for length and clarity:

One of New York’s biggest offseason moves was landing linebacker Brian Burns in a trade with the Panthers. How quickly do you think we’ll see him make an impact on that defense?

Leonard: “I think he needs to make a huge impact for them to be a good team. They’ve invested a lot in him, both in the trade with the draft picks and capital, and the money they spent. This defense under Shane Bowen is going to be focused more on a four-man pass rush and coverage in the back. So there’s going to be more asked of Brian Burns, Dexter Lawrence and Kayvon Thibodeaux, those three up front, for them to get to the quarterback and create pressure. Not that they won’t send blitzers, but they’re going to ask more of them to do that. It’s kind of twofold. On the one hand, Burns looks like the type of pass rusher the Giants were hoping Thibodeaux was going to be and so far has not been consistently. The other thing, though, is that he just came from a Carolina Panthers team that rarely had the lead, and therefore was not in a ton of obvious pass rush situations. Opponents were allowed to run the ball on them late in the game. So the Giants are that same kind of team, at least based on 2023. They’re a team that struggled to score points on offense, didn’t have a lot of late-game leads and didn’t allow their pass rushers to tee off.

“The potential is there for Burns to be a wrecking ball for them, but — it actually might sound funny — but they kind of need their offense to be more competent in order to let Burns get one-on-ones and be unleashed late in the season. Playing next to Dexter Lawrence should help the command in double teams, although he did play next to Derrick Brown in Carolina as well.”

What have you seen from new defensive coordinator Shane Bowen in implementing his system?

Leonard: “He sounded restless that it wasn’t coming together as quickly as he wanted it to at the end of the spring, which I think was one of the more interesting takeaways heading into training camp. I don’t blame him and I agree with him. Mainly the point is, this is a third-year head coach but a lot of the staff including Bowen is brand new, and they really don’t have any — they can’t afford to get to Week 4 before they start clicking on all cylinders. Like they need to be ready to go in Week 1. It is a more simplified system than what returning players are used to under [Wink] Martindale, but I would say it’s also more predictable compared to what Martindale ran for opposing offenses.

“I think it’s gonna be a lot on execution of players in a specific scheme, you know, maybe a little bit more zone. The thing Bowen was most restless about is that he felt like guys in certain spots that they were giving opportunities to were not wrestling those positions and starting spots away from their potential competition in training camp. He wants to see players assert themselves, grab it by the neck and not let go. The reality of the situation is that they don’t have the kind of roster that is going to allow you to look at them in June and say, ‘We’re ready to play on September 1.’ That’s just not the team that he has inherited. Biggest question mark with Bowen is, how much was the defense Mike Vrabel’s baby in Tennessee and how much was it Bowen’s? They did have some success there, but Vrabel was very involved in the defense as well, so Bowen kind of has a chance to make his mark outside of Vrabel. The potential biggest positive would be that, his track record, one thing he has done pretty consistently when running defense is to stop the run. The Giants do have some personnel deficiencies around the roster, including on defense, but if he can just get their run defense under control and not let teams just march on the Giants, and give the ball back to the offense, that could be the way that they get some footing early on in the season.”

Aside from Burns, who do you think was the Giants’ most impactful offseason signing?

Leonard: “I think in the end, it’s going to be Jermaine Eluemunor and I know they spent more money on Jon Runyan Jr. at right guard. Right now, they signed Jermaine Eluemunor. They gave him starter money and he was the right tackle for the Raiders last year. Now, they played him exclusively at left guard during the spring because they want to solidify the interior and they want to give Evan Neal a chance to protect/keep that right tackle job and grow into the first-round pick they selected him as a couple of years ago.

“I just think that based on their lack of tackle depth and what they’re going to need to survive and be a capable and consistent team, I think Eluemunor is going to end up finding himself at right tackle sooner rather than later. If there’s a player who could, let’s say, elevate a weakness to a semi-strength, that’s the position where I think there’s the greatest potential for improvement if you look around the roster. As far as free agent signings go, outside of [Malik] Nabers at wide receiver.”

What are your first impressions of Nabers, the Giants’ first-round draft pick?

Leonard: “He looks special, he is the best playmaking receiver I’ve seen on the Giants’ practice field since Odell [Beckham Jr.] was a Giant. He had one practice — I know they’re not in pads so coaches take it with a grain of salt, and that’s true to a large extent — but he’s catching touchdown passes, unguardable, making some of the corners look bad and largely profiling as what the Giants need him to be, which is like the ultimate security blanket of ‘if nothing else is working on offense, we still know Malik is going to be open.’ We also know that he has strong hands and yards-after-catch capabilities.

“There’s a question of how much attention the Giants would be able to draw off him because there’s really nobody else for defenses to key on. So that could be a concern. He’s also only 20 years old. I think on-field, I’m not concerned about his ability to make plays. I think the one question or the thing to watch and monitor as far as how huge an impact he can make is how he responds to adversity. That could be a double-team where the Giants just can’t get in the ball enough in a game and they lose the game. It could be the Giants struggling as a team and starting 1-3. How does 21- — at that point — year-old Malik Nabers handle it? Certainly, he looks worth the pick he was selected at.”

What can the Giants do to replace production from RB Saquon Barkley, who signed with the Philadelphia Eagles in free agency?

Leonard: “Well, Brian Daboll is trying to turn this into the Buffalo Giants. You can understand why he wants to get back to having a Josh Allen-type offense, obviously. When Allen had Stefon Diggs, that’s really when it took off. So they’re going from a run-based offense to a pass-heavy offense. That’s the design, that’s what they want. But they’re going to need balance to be able to take pressure off the passing game, off the quarterback and off the offensive line. Devin Singletary is here to help do that. He’s not a bellcow back, though, that they’re gonna try to complement him with a host of different running backs with different skill sets. Like Tyrone Tracy, the rookie out of Purdue, he might factor in as well. I think by and large, the answer to that is they are not going to replace [Barkley]. I think this could work a couple of ways. Saquon could get hurt and the Giants could say, ‘I told you so.’ Or he could run crazy for the Eagles and they could look really bad for doing that. As far as how they function, forget what the Eagles do or don’t do, the bottom line is they had a chance to pair Saquon and Nabers together. And they chose letting Saquon go and now it’s just Nabers. I think when we are six, seven, eight weeks into the season, I think we’re going to look back and say, like I don’t think Saquon is infallible, you know. He has some strengths, there’s some things he probably thinks he’s — I think he has a higher opinion of himself at times where sometimes it’s like, ‘Well, you don’t pass protect well.’ That’s just a fact, right? By and large, I think five or six weeks into the season, they’re gonna look back and say they wish they had that other premier player who took the eyes of the defense off their No. 1 receiver.”

What should we expect from QB Daniel Jones after an injury-shortened 2023?

Leonard: “He looked very good physically during the spring. They appeared to be holding him back out of caution from 11-on-11. You talk to doctors about the ACL, even when a guy is recovering as well as Jones is and they say that running vertically, just north and south come Week 1 in September, let alone in training camp for Daniel Jones, shouldn’t be that much of an issue. The issue would be hard cuts, hard stops, more like what a running back would have to do. I think that’s my biggest question mark. It’s possible that Daniel, because he is more of a straight-line runner, tuck-it-and-run type guy, that the knee won’t hinder him. That’s going to be a wait-and-see because he is an athlete as a quarterback, he’s not just a pocket passer. That could dictate whether he gets out of the gate fast or not. How he moves in those situations, especially if protection is breaking down.

“As far as his neck injuries go from the 7-on-7 throwing I’ve seen him do, he doesn’t look as awkward as he did last year when he was coming off that injury with a nerve in his neck. But that’s just a constant concern about again, protecting him, keeping him healthy and having him have the mobility to get down and protect himself.”

What training camp battles are you looking forward to?

Leonard: “No. 2 corner is high on that list. The Giants’ secondary — like Deonte Banks, their rookie corner last year and now he’s going into Year 2 — ideally on your team, he’s probably a No. 2 corner, but he’s their No. 1. So their No. 2 corner is, at the moment Cor’Dale Flott, a third-year player from LSU. Third-round pick. A guy who is more suited to the slot and was growing well, but can he handle that position? There’s a lot of positions on the Giants’ roster where it makes you kind of say, ‘If only they had one more guy to kind of make this depth chart look a little bit more filled out.’ No. 2 corner, I still think they’re gonna end up having to sign someone to play there.

“Tyler Nubin at safety, I’m very interested in seeing him versus Dane Belton at free safety, like whether the rookie wins that battle and gets on the field. Tight end is an interesting one. No premier names there, but definitely unsettled who’s going to be playing there. To me, the top thing to watch non-quarterback-wise is what happens with their right tackle, Evan Neal. He wasn’t really on the field all spring after a misdiagnosis of his ankle injury late last season, he had surgery for the fracture. He was really not as much of a part of the team as you would have expected through the spring. But he’s profiling and projected to be their starting right tackle. So a lot unsettled there up front.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t just point out, I know they keep saying Daniel Jones, it’s his job and Drew Lock says he’s the backup. To me, you always have to couch it with the Giants, because they constantly say the expectation is this, the expectation is that. By and large, I think Drew Lock is much closer to being in the game than people realize.”

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