How Have New York Giants Addressed Biggest Weaknesses from 2014?

Coming off a 6-10 season last year, there is probably no argument that the New York Giants had quite a number of weaknesses on their roster that they needed to address.

So they tried to do just that via free agency and the draft, adding some new faces they are trying to integrate into the lineup.

While we won't know for certain if the Giants did indeed address their most glaring weaknesses until the preseason at the earliest, let’s run down the list of weaknesses, what they did and what the expectations are moving forward.

Offensive Line

Kathy Willens/Associated Press

Simply put, the Giants couldn’t run the ball last year behind an offensive line that included Will Beatty at left tackle, Weston Richburg at left guard, J.D. Walton at center, John Jerry at right guard and Justin Pugh at right tackle.

According to Football Outsiders, the Giants’ run blocking ranked 22nd in the NFL, a big reason why their running game finished 23rd in the league, averaging 100.1 yards per game.

When it came to run blocking, only Beatty finished with a positive overall grade, according to Pro Football Focus—in fact, Beatty was the Giants’ best run-blocker period last season.

What about the rest of the offensive line? Per PFF, of the five players who earned the worst grades for run blocking, four of them were starters on the offensive line, with Walton (minus-11.4) and Jerry (minus-16.4) being the worst of the bunch.

What Changed?

Oh, how about the entire starting offensive line? That’s right—thanks to the pectoral injury suffered by left tackle Will Beatty, not one of the five projected starting offensive linemen will return to a position that he played the year before.

Let’s start with the tackles. Beatty looks as though he’ll be replaced by Ereck Flowers, the Giants’ first-round draft pick and No. 9 overall pick in the 2015 draft. Right tackle Justin Pugh will move inside to left guard, a decision that head coach Tom Coughlin said was made before the Beatty injury.

Marshall Newhouse, who signed in the offseason as a free agent, is currently penciled in as the right tackle. Weston Richburg, last year’s starting left guard, will move to his natural position of center. And Geoff Schwartz, back from season-ending ankle surgery, will move to his more natural right guard position.

What’s the Outlook?

The pectoral injury Beatty suffered has thrown the offensive line configuration into a state of disarray.  

The Giants are hoping that Flowers adjusts to the speed of the game and can hold down that left tackle spot, but he’s going to experience growing pains, like any rookie would.

The good news is that Flowers has the skill set. If he can clean up his technique issues, which include his pad level and his tendency to look hesitant off the snap, the left tackle spot should be good to go.

Also, don’t be surprised if the Giants add more depth, especially at offensive tackle, where experience is paper-thin right now. 

According to Dom Consentino of NJ Advance Media, Giants general manager Jerry Reese said the plan is to continue looking for offensive line help once the team makes training camp cuts.

"Obviously, everybody has around 90 men on their roster right now, so there'll be some cuts; there will be some chances to add some offensive linemen," Reese said.

Safety

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According to Pro Football Focus, the four Giants safeties—Stevie Brown, Antrel Rolle, Quintin Demps and Nat Berhe—combined for a 91.4 NFL rating, which included picking off as many passes (seven) as allowing touchdowns.

In fact, the play of the safeties is a big reason why the Giants are likely going in a different direction at this position. Per NFL.com, the Giants finished in a three-way tie (with the Arizona Cardinals and New England Patriots) for having allowed the third most deep passes of 20 or more yards with 62.

The Giants also finished in the top 10 league-wide for most big-play passes allowed going for 40 or more yards with 13.

Considering the safeties are the last line of defense against the deep-pass plays, these numbers just weren’t very good.

What Changed?

Despite proclaiming a desire to re-sign veteran Antrel Rolle, when the time came to put up, the Giants didn’t make a sincere offer to keep him, according to Nick Powell of NJ Advance Media.

Rolle took his talents to the Chicago Bears, who gave him a three-year, $11.25 million contract.

As it turned out, the Giants didn’t make much of an effort to retain Quintin Demps, and they reportedly lowballed Stevie Brown, according to Paul Schwartz of the New York Post, as Brown signed a one-year deal with the Houston Texans.

New York did add some new depth. It signed veteran Josh Gordy, who had been with the Indianapolis Colts, and it made the big draft-day trade to grab Landon Collins at the top of the second round.

Still, the Giants went from having one of the most experienced units on the team to the opposite end of the spectrum, a factor that concerns numerous fans.

What’s the Outlook?

Barring any injuries, Collins is going to get one of the two starting spots. Already the rookie out of Alabama looks as comfortable as any veteran out there, despite having to learn a new playbook.

It might just help him that defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo is not planning to assign the “free” and “strong” designations to his safeties for the time being.

Instead, the plan is to use the safeties according to their strength, and based on the two OTA practices New York allowed the media to attend, Collins looks like he could provide an instant upgrade to the Giants run defense.

As for the other spot, with Berhe sidelined due to a calf strain, Cooper Taylor has been getting the majority of the reps with the first team. That’s expected to change, though, once Nat Berhe gets back on the field.

In the meantime, don’t be surprised if Spagnuolo designs the defense in such a way as to minimize the responsibilities of the safeties—who get an honorable mention in NFL.com’s Chris Wesseling’s list of weakest safety groups in the NFL—as they grow into their new roles.

Linebackers

Duane Burleson/Associated Press

Let’s start with the run defense, which finished 30th in the NFL. While that can’t all be put on the linebackers’ shoulders—the defensive ends oftentimes had trouble on the edges—the lack of speed among the Giants linebackers often meant that they were making tackles more than eight yards away from the line of scrimmage.

Pro Football Focus has a signature stat known as tackling efficiency, which is the number of attempted tackles per missed tackle.

Let’s use the NFL leader in tackles, Carolina Panthers Pro Bowl inside linebacker Luke Kuechly, and his 15.7 combined tackle efficiency from PFF as a benchmark in gauging how the Giants linebackers did.

The results are not very good. Jameel McClain, who stepped in for Beason in the middle, finished with an 8.8 combined tackling efficiency, ranking him 18th out of 25 inside linebackers who took at least 60 percent of their team’s snaps last season.

On the outside, Mark Herzlich, who saw his highest number of career snaps thanks to the Beason injury, and Jacquian Williams finished with 10.7 and 10.6 grades, respectively.

There is another supporting argument as to why the linebacker position was a weakness, and that is a lack of overall speed in the unit.

As has been noted in the past, not all defensive tackles are created equal; specifically, a tackle made within five yards of the line of scrimmage is going to have more of an impact than a tackle made more than six yards down the field.

This was a problem with the Giants linebackers last year. All too often, they made their tackles way down the field, suggesting that unit had a lack of speed.

What Changed?

The Giants said goodbye to Spencer Paysinger and Jacquian Williams, the latter of whom was their starting weak-side linebacker last year.

They brought in J.T. Thomas from the Jacksonville Jaguars and Jonathan Casillas from New England, and they re-signed Mark Herzlich to a two-year deal.

Perhaps the biggest change is middle linebacker Jon Beason. Last year, the Giants only had Beason for four games, and in those games, he didn’t look anywhere near to the force he was for them in 2013—this because of a lingering toe injury.

Thus far, the Giants aren’t taking any chances with the oft-injured Beason’s health. In an interview with SiriusXM NFL Radio (h/t the Sports Xchange), Beason revealed that the team is managing his practice reps during the OTAs.

"I only know how to practice hard,” Beason said. “So what the Giants have been doing is taking reps off me at practice so it's frustrating, but I get the method to their madness."

The Giants can only hope that their “madness" is enough to keep the 30-year-old centerpiece of Steve Spagnuolo’s defense on the field for 16 games. 

What’s the Outlook?

Despite all the offseason moves, Chris Wesseling of NFL.com still believes that the Giants’ linebacker unit is the weakest in the NFL.

Wesseling’s opinion is primarily based on Beason’s long-running injury history and the fact that Thomas, who was better known for his special teams play in Jacksonville and Chicago, is “penciled in" on the weak side.

Truthfully, though, the key with this unit will be staying healthy. Whereas last year on defense the Giants tried to get things done from the outside in, Spagnuolo’s philosophy is reversed.

Given the acquisitions made, the Giants are no doubt hoping they have added some speed to a unit that last year lacked in that department.

Defensive Ends

Julio Cortez/Associated Press

In 2014, the Giants finished fourth in the NFL in total sacks with 47, which wasn’t too shabby.  

The run defense was quite another story. Jason Pierre-Paul was solid, as was Kerry Wynn. They were the only two defensive ends to earn positive run-defense grades from Pro Football Focus.  

The same couldn't be said about the rest of the defensive ends—Mathias Kiwanuka, Damontre Moore and Robert Ayers, all of whom graded at the bottom of the barrel against the run.

Think about how many times a ball-carrier scooted around the edge to find daylight, a factor that a slower group of linebackers aided. That combination is a big reason why the Giants run defense last year was so abysmal and a reason why New York needed to change something. 

What Changed?

The Giants bid farewell to Kiwanuka, in essence replacing him with veteran George Selvie and adding third-round draft pick Owa Odighizuwa.

Currently, Ayers is sidelined with an ankle sprain, and Pierre-Paul is not in camp as he continues to delay signing his tender offer.

By training camp, however, the Giants should have Ayers and Pierre-Paul back.

What’s the Outlook?

There is some concern with this position. For all the videos Pierre-Paul likes to post of himself working out, he’s missing some valuable classroom time that he'd spend interacting with his teammates and coaches to gain a better understanding of the defensive philosophies of the new coordinator.

As noted in the analysis on the optimal defense, when the great Michael Strahan sat out of training camp in 2007, it took him a few games before everything finally started to make sense. When that happened, the defense began firing on all cylinders.

Then there is the matter of who will play that other defensive end spot. The most likely candidate is Selvie, who, per PFF, finished last year with a respectable 7.8 grade in run defense.

With two of their first three games against division opponents, the Giants can ill-afford to come out of the gate slowly on defense—not if they aspire to win the division.

However, ultimately the Giants would probably like to have an every-down type of player who can defend the run and rush the passer equally well so that their personnel packages don’t give away what they’re planning to do.

Slot Cornerback

Duane Burleson/Associated Press

In retrospect, the Giants' plan for the slot cornerback position was so perfect that it was flawed.

To recap, New York said goodbye to Terrell Thomas, who valiantly fought his way back from three ACL injuries to the same knee, and signed Walter Thurmond III from the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks.

The first mistake the Giants made was to give in to Thurmond’s demand for a one-year contract.

At the time, the decision did make some sense because Thurmond had never played in a full 16-game season and was not (at least according to Pro Football Focus) a top-10 slot cornerback.

When the Giants lost Thurmond for the season after two games, they appeared to take a gamble, hoping that no one would compete for the 27-year-old's services with him coming off a chest injury and that they could re-sign him.

They were wrong, but that wasn’t the worst of it. They had very little in the way of depth behind Thurmond, though the injury bug did play a major factor in wiping out their next best option, Trumaine McBride.

For all the uncertainty surrounding the starting safeties, it appears that defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo at least has an idea of what he hopes to do.

The same can’t be said at the all-important slot cornerback position, according to Spagnuolo.

"

That’s one we’re trying to feel through, to be honest with you. You’ll probably see as we go through the OTA’s that there’ll be a number of guys working in and out of there. … [McBride] is one of them. Josh Gordy has done it. Mike Harris did it a little bit last year. We’ve got some guys that we can try, but we need to get that solved and we need to identify who the nickel is. 

"

What Changed?

Not only did the Giants lose Thurmond to the Philadelphia Eagles, but they didn’t address the slot cornerback spot in free agency or in the draft, a curious decision given the importance of the nickelback role in today’s defenses.  

What’s the Outlook?

While Spagnuolo and the rest of the coaches try to figure out the identity of the nickelback for the coming season, whatever solution they come up with will probably be a one-year Band-Aid at best.

The obvious solution would have been to draft at the position, and it’s certainly possible that had they not traded away two picks to move up to get safety Landon Collins, perhaps they would have rolled the dice on a cornerback to play that slot role for the future.

It’s also possible that they'll try Bennett Jackson in that role. Jackson, a cornerback by trade, has been learning the safety position. Since there are some similarities between playing the slot and playing safety, he could be a natural fit for the long term.

However, the more realistic scenario is that the slot cornerback competition will come down to McBride, who is in the final year of his contract, and Harris, who might just be the best option at the position. 

Patricia Traina covers the Giants for Inside Football, the Journal Inquirer and Sports Xchange. All quotes and information were obtained firsthand unless otherwise sourced. 

Follow @Patricia_Traina