What to Expect from the New York Giants Offense in 2024

It doesn’t take a football savant to recognize that the New York Giants offense struggled mightily during the 2023 season. The injuries to quarterback Daniel Jones didn’t help, but the offense put forth multiple poor performances even before that point.

Going into a potentially make-or-break 2024 season, head coach Brian Daboll will likely take over play-calling duties from offensive coordinator Mike Kafka. I believe the offense will see significant changes this season, regardless of who’s calling the plays for the Giants. 

One of the biggest changes I expect is how often the Giants throw in neutral situations. In 2023, the Giants threw the ball 54.29% of the time on first and ten – that’s a Pass Rate Over Expected (PROE) of 8.11%. On 3rd-and-10, the Giants had a PROE of 1.03%.

PROE is typically used to determine whether or not teams want to pass and are confident in quarterback play. The significance behind those numbers? Those are the only times the Giants threw the ball more than they were expected. 

For the Giants, the numbers show that the team was very conservative with how often they were looking to throw the ball. The Giants ended up with a PROE of -3.6%, the 23rd-lowest rate in the NFL. Even when Jones was healthy, the Giants had the 20th-lowest PROE in the NFL.

I think the Giants will take a much more pass-happy approach for the 2024 season, similar to the approach the Bills took when Daboll called the plays for them. When Daboll called the offense for the Bills in 2020, they had one of the most effective passing attacks in the NFL, focused on attacking underneath to move the chains and using the deep ball to create explosive plays.

With Jones healthy, the Giants have a roster to attack the same way Daboll did in Buffalo. With the free agent additions of Jon Runyan Jr. and Jermaine Eluemunor, the Giants’ offensive line has improved and should now be considered at least within the league average. 

Drafting Malik Nabers in the first round has given Daboll another explosive weapon to scheme around with Jalin Hyatt and Darius Slayton while using Wan’Dale Robinson and Daniel Bellinger as chain movers. 

In the run game, I expect that the Giants will move more toward a gap-based run game this season. New offensive line coach Carmen Bricillo has spent his entire NFL career to this point with either the Patriots or Raiders, both with primarily gap-based run schemes.

The NFL is cyclical with scheme, going from every team using fullbacks and running power primarily to the wide zone emergence, and has now seen offenses shift back toward the gap-based run game. The Giants have positioned themselves as the next team to make that shift by hiring Bricillo and signing Runyan and Eluemunor.

The Los Angeles Rams, one of the most wide zone-heavy offenses in the NFL since hiring Sean McVay, have become the most gap-heavy run game last year. 

This isn’t to say that the Giants need to follow suit, but there’s a good reason the Rams made that shift: NFL teams adjusted to speedy offenses by giving lighter defensive boxes, so he made his offense a more downhill style.

The Giants’ offense also needs to become less predictable than it was during the 2023 season. In 2023, the offense had a tell that based on the formation it was in, defenses could guess whether a run or pass was coming.

When coming out in shotgun, the Giants threw the ball on 64.72 percent of plays. When lining up under center, the Giants ran the ball 65.1 percent of the time. Offenses that can overpower opponents or are just better than opponents can get away with that kind of predictability, but for a team like the Giants in 2023, that’s unacceptable.

There are legitimate concerns for the Giants surrounding Jones’s health not just for 2024 but also for future seasons. However, that can’t keep the Giants from utilizing one of Jones’s best assets as a quarterback: his running ability.

Despite playing in just six games in 2023, Jones had the 17th-most rushing yards amongst quarterbacks. Jones’ rushing ability is something that the Giants will look to bring back to the table in 2024 as both a scrambler and on designed rushing attempts. While his legs will be needed, the staff must make it clear to Jones that he must either slide or get out of bounds.

Daboll taking over play-calling duties would be exactly what the Giants offense needs in what might be a make-or-break year for the coaching staff.