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In The Trenches: A Bold Prediction For The Giants Offense

New York Giants, Featured, Football, Professional

July 13, 2022

To say the New York Giants offensive line has been a consistent weakness for the past seven+ years would be a gross understatement. In fact, when I think of the Giants offensive line, there are so many adjectives that come to mind, I have a hard time picking just one; atrocious, horrible, horrendous, pathetic, putrid, disgusting, dumpster fire and the list just goes on and on.

While the Giants have made a complete overhaul of the offensive line, you really can’t help but wonder if it will be enough this time around.

According to Pro Football Focus, the Giants offensive line finished 30^th overall in the 2021 season with only Carolina and Miami behind them. New general manager Joe Schoen completely overhauled the offensive line unit and replaced every starter except for Andrew Thomas. Schoen also added some young developmental talent, which had to be addressed, since the lack of depth contributed to the disastrous performance of the offensive line last season.

While the entire fan base is excited for Evan Neal to begin his rookie season, let’s not overlook the fact that Andrew Thomas was the best-graded player on the line, allowing just 19 pressures over 517 pass-blocking snaps and improved drastically in year two. If you are still on the fence about Thomas’s value to the team and the offensive line, just think back to last season when he missed time due his ankle injury. The offensive line was horrendous and flat-out painful to watch.

Thomas alone makes my case that sometimes MVP’s aren’t always Quarterbacks.

Offensively, things are looking up for the Giants and their offensive line this season as Pro Football Focus currently has the unit ranked number 18 in their Pre-season Offensive Line Rankings. That’s quite a jump from number 30 and it’s exactly the kind of improvement you want to see with a team that has been in re-building mode for what seems like at least eight years.

We also need to give credit to Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll for making the correct decision to not extend any players that underperformed last year and instead went the route of replacing those guys with players who were already familiar with Brian Daboll’s system.

This re-tooled offensive line looks promising and while we can’t predict what will happen on the field, we can see that the offseason moves are helping the Giants offense trend in the right direction. It has been a long time since fans could get excited about a New York Giants offensive line, but I think this year that all starts to change.

If the Giants can solidify this unit, that will help the run game and if the run game gets going, that will take some pressure off quarterback Daniel Jones and keep the opposing defense honest.

Defense may win championships but games are won in the trenches, and for the Giants, this season is riding on the continued improvement of the offensive line and Daniel Jones.