This is Embarrassing For The New York Giants

This is Embarrassing For The New York Giants

This is one of the many reasons why the Giants absolutely suck. Rookies who are allowed to do whatever they want. You would think with all that rest, he can actually get to a quarterback. This guy’s asleep in meetings. Holy cow. I need you to understand just how high the expectations were when the New York Giants called Abdul Carter’s name with the number three overall pick in the 2025 NFL draft. Because what we’re witnessing right now is not just a disappointing rookie season. It’s the complete and total collapse of what was supposed to be a generational talent joining one of the most stacked defensive lines in football. And it all came crashing down this past weekend in a way that nobody saw coming. But we’re going to get to the bench controversy and Carter’s very public denial in a minute. Because to really understand how spectacular this failure has been, we need to go back to draft night. If you guys remember when I was doing my pre-draft coverage, I came out and definitively said that Abdul Carter was the best prospect in this entire NFL draft. Carter wasn’t just any prospect. This was a guy who led all of college football with 23 and a half tackles for a loss in 2024. He was a unanimous all-American who racked up 12 sacks and basically terrorized quarterbacks for an entire season. The 15th unanimous all-American in Penn State history. The Big 10 defensive player of the year. Over his three seasons at Penn State, Carter put up numbers that were ridiculous. 172 tackles, 39 12 tackles for a loss, 23 sacks, 13 passes defended, five forced fumbles, and an interception. Those sack numbers left him sixth all time in Penn State history. And his tackles for a loss total is eighth all time. For context, this is the same program that produced Micah Parsons, one of the greatest podcasters in the NFL today. And analysts were legitimately comparing Carter to him. ESPN’s Matt Miller called Carter the best overall player in the entire draft class. GM Joe Shane literally said they were high-fiving and hugging in the draft room for five minutes before making the pick official. That’s not normal behavior for picking a defensive lineman. That’s the reaction you have when you know you just added a potential Hall of Famer to your roster. And here’s where the expectations got out of control. Sure, when you think of the New York Giants, you don’t think of one of the most terrorizing pass rushes in all of football, but the Giants have been investing heavy draft capital in their defensive line for quite some time now. On the inside, you have Dexter Lawrence, the two-time second team allpro, who has been one of the more dominant interior linemen in football. On the edge, the Giants had recently traded to get Brian Burns from Carolina, a guy who had at least seven and a half sacks in every single season of his career. And then they had Kavon Thibido, their 2022 firstround pick, who has shown some flashes, but was still trying to put it together. Think about that for a second. This is four first round picks that all went into pass rush. Burns, Lawrence, Thibido, and now Carter. This was supposed to be an absolute nightmare for offensive coordinators. How do you even game plan for that? Who do you double team? Who gets the extra help? When you’ve got that much talent on one line, somebody’s going to be in a one-on-one matchup that they can absolutely win. The hype got so intense that former NFL Sachs leader Shawn Marman predicted Carter would become the first Giants player to win defensive rookie of the year since Lawrence Taylor did back in 1981. And yeah, those LT comparisons were everywhere, which if you know anything about Giants history, you know how insane that is. LT is arguably the greatest defensive player in NFL history. A guy who literally changed how football is played. The bar was set impossibly high. Actually, the Lawrence Taylor thing became a whole situation before Carter even played a snap. Abdul Carter wanted to wear number 56, Taylor’s iconic jersey number. He reached out to the legend asking for permission. And LT shut it down hard. He told him the number was retired and suggested he pick another one and make that famous. To Carter’s credit, he handled it with maturity. He posted on social media that the worst thing he could say was no. My stance don’t change. LT is the goat. Nothing but respect. This is just going to make me work even harder, and I love it. He ended up settling on number 51 after also getting turned down by Phil Sims family for number 11. The man had multiple strikes on jersey numbers before he even got to training camp. Maybe we should have seen that as an omen, but who cares? This is just silly jersey drama. The draft class as a whole was being celebrated as potentially franchiseing and Abdul Carter was the crown jewel here. The New York Giants did trade back in the first round and grabbed Jackson Dart at number 25. Then in the fourth round, they snagged Cam Scataboo from Arizona State, one of the most exciting running backs that the Giants have had since Saquon Barkley, a man who finished fifth in Heisman Trophy voting last year. The Giants loaded up on both sides of the ball. A potential franchise quarterback, a game-breaking running back, and a defensive line that on paper looked absolutely unstoppable. NFL analysts gave the Giants draft an Agrade across the board. This looked like the kind of draft that could turn a franchise around overnight. The hype train just kept accelerating in training camp. Giants legend Carl Banks, who played alongside Lawrence Taylor, started making some wild observations during practices. He told reporters that Carter had this instinctive ability to make plays that he couldn’t even explain afterwards. Banks said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that it reminded him of how Lawrence Taylor used to do things. And when you’d ask him how he did it, LT would literally be like, “What? I don’t know.” That natural unexplainable instinct to always be in the right place at the right time. Giants beat reporters were calling Carter unblockable in one-on- ons. Social media was flooded with clips of him absolutely destroying offensive linemen in practice. Brian Dballal was gushing about his traits, talking about his ability to bend around the edge and create problems in the back field. And look, I know training camp performances don’t always translate to game day success because we’ve seen plenty of practice allpros who disappear when the lights come on. But with Carter, nobody was worried about that. This was a guy who dominated at the highest level of college football. He’d shown up in the college football playoff, recording multiple sacks against top competition. The film didn’t lie and the production spoke for itself. And then the regular season started and week by week, game by game, something that nobody expected started happening. Abdul Carter just disappeared. Week one against Washington, he recorded half a sack and that was it. That was his only sack of the entire season so far. And we’re now 11 games in. Let me put that into perspective for you. Carter had 12 sacks in his final season at Penn State. Through 11 NFL games, he has half a sack. One tackle for a loss compared to 23 and a half in college. The numbers are honestly brutal. As of right now, through 11 games, Carter is sitting at 11 solo tackles and 20 total tackles. That’s it. Zero forced fumbles, zero interceptions, just that half sack from week one that feels like it happened in a different lifetime. For context, Brian Burns already has 11 sacks this season and is leading the entire NFL. Kavon Thibido has two and a half sacks. Even Dexter Lawrence is outperforming the number three overall pick. Now, I want to be fair here because there is some nuance to this story. Carter’s pressure numbers tell a slightly different tale. According to PFF, he’s got 34 quarterback pressures through 10 games, which ties him with Miles Garrett for the ninth most in the entire NFL. That’s actually really good, especially for a rookie. His 12% pressure rate is second on the team behind only Burns. But here’s the problem. Of the 10 defenders with 34 or more pressures this season, the guys with the fewest sacks after Carter are George Carlis and Liatu Lu, and they both have five sacks. Carter has 0.5. That’s a conversion rate that’s historically bad. He’s getting to the quarterback. He’s winning his matchups, but he’s just not finishing. Whether that’s technique, bad luck, or something else entirely, the results are what they are. And Carter knows it. He went on record saying, “I got to do better. It’s about being more physical, more violent, being in the right gap. I just got to do better. At least he’s holding himself accountable, which is more than you can say for a lot of struggling rookies. But the onfield struggles, those pale in comparison to what happened this past weekend, and this is where the story took a turn that nobody saw coming. November 16th, 2025, the Giants are hosting the Green Bay Packers at Metife Stadium. It’s Mike Kofka’s first game as interim head coach after Brian Dball got fired earlier in the week following yet another blown double-digit lead. The Giants are 2 and8. The season’s basically over, but this was supposed to be a fresh start. New coach, new energy. Maybe they could salvage something from this disaster. Kavon Thibido is out with a shoulder injury, which means this is Abdul Carter’s opportunity. His chance to finally step up and show everyone why he was worth that third overall pick. The defensive line is depleted. Brian Burns needs help and Carter’s going to get maximum playing time at his natural position. This should be his breakout game. The Packers get the ball first. Defense takes the field and Abdul Carter is nowhere to be seen. Not on the sideline stretching, not in the defensive huddle. Tomman Fox, a backup who most Giants fans probably couldn’t pick out of a lineup, is lining up in Carter’s spot. Packer’s opening drive lasts six plays before they punt. Carter finally jogs onto the field for the second series of plays and every single defensive snap for the rest of the game. He finishes with one tackle and one QB hit in a 27 to20 loss that drops the Giants to 2-9. After the game, Mike Kofka is asked about Carter’s absence on the opening drive. His answer, coach’s decision. That’s it. No elaboration, just coach’s decision. Carter himself was slightly more forthcoming, telling reporters, “I made a mistake during the week that was detrimental to the team. I already know that whatever I do is going to have consequences. That was the consequence. I have to live with it and keep playing. So that’s where it stood Sunday night. Carter got benched for something, took accountability, and moved on. No big deal, right? I mean, rookies make mistakes. It happens. Kofka even praised him after the game, saying, “He played his butt off. He practiced his tail off. I’m really happy about Abdul and excited to watch him continue to grow.” But then Monday morning happened and everything exploded. Dan Dugen of The Athletic dropped a bomb. According to team sources, Carter didn’t just make some generic mistake. He was asleep at the team facility and missed the team’s walkthrough practice on Saturday. And it gets even worse. The report also stated that being late to meetings had been a recurring problem throughout Carter’s entire rookie season. But former head coach Brian Dball just let it slide. Think about that for a second. The third overall pick, a guy being paid millions of dollars, can’t show up to meetings on time, and the head coach just lets it happen for an entire season. No wonder why Brian Dayball got fired. ESPN’s Jordan Renan confirmed the story with his own source, saying Carter was asleep at the team facility and missed a recent walkthrough. The story went viral immediately. Social media exploded. Giants fans who were already frustrated with the season had a new target for their anger. The number three overall pick is sleeping through walkthroughs. Are you kidding me? But here’s where it gets really interesting because Abdul Carter wasn’t about to just take this lying down. A few hours after the reports came out, he posted this on X. Was not sleep, actually doing recovery. Nonetheless, that’s on me. Okay, so he’s saying that he wasn’t sleeping, he was doing recovery. That’s a pretty specific clarification. If he was doing recovery work with trainers or something that would make this whole thing look very different. Maybe it was just a scheduling mixup. Maybe the trainers had him doing treatment during the walkthrough and there was a miscommunication. But then just a little while later, Carter posted again and this time the message was clear and pointed. When the hate don’t work, they start telling lies. Now he’s not just clarifying, he’s calling the entire report a lie. He’s accusing multiple reputable NFL reporters, guys who’ve covered the Giants for years and have rockolid sources of just making stuff up because they hate him. It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for him. Here’s my thing. I want to give Abdul Carter the benefit of the doubt. I really do. He’s 22 years old. This is his first year in the NFL. He’s dealing with expectations that would crush most people. And he’s on a team that’s completely fallen apart. The Giants are 2-9. They’ve blown four double-digit road leads this season. They just fired their head coach. The offensive line is a disaster. And nothing’s working. But here’s the problem with this denial. Multiple sources, Dan Dugen and Jordan Renan, aren’t just random Twitter accounts throwing out rumors. These are established, credentialed reporters who stake their careers and reputations on getting stories right. They don’t report something like this unless they have solid sources telling them it happened. And it’s not just one source. Dugen said, according to team sources, not just a source, but multiple sources. Plus, Carter himself admitted right after the game that he made a mistake during the week that was detrimental to the team. his words. If it was just a scheduling mixup with recovery work, why wouldn’t he have just said that immediately? Why accept responsibility for a detrimental mistake if you were literally just following the trainer’s orders? And the part about being chronically late to meetings, Carter didn’t address that at all in his tweets. He denied sleeping through the walkthrough, but he didn’t say anything about the pattern of tardiness that multiple sources confirmed. That silence is pretty telling. Here’s what I think really happened. I think Carter probably was doing some kind of recovery work at the facility, but I also think he either fell asleep during that recovery work or lost track of time and missed the walkthrough as a result. The intent might not have been to skip the walkthrough, but the end result was the same. He wasn’t there when he was supposed to be there. And for a rookie who’s already been having discipline issues all season, that was the final straw for the new coaching staff. Brian Burns, to his credit, handled the whole situation like a veteran leader should. After the game, he said he talked to Carter about it and told him to stay ready. Burns didn’t see it as a major issue. Said it’s just professional, though. There isn’t too much to be said. That’s how you handle it. Support your teammate, keep it in house, and move forward. So, the question everyone’s asking now is what the hell went wrong with Abdul Carter? How does a guy go from being arguably the best player in the entire draft to barely making an impact 11 games into his rookie season? I think there are a few factors at play here. First, the transition from college to the NFL is always harder for defensive linemen than people realize. The offensive linemen are bigger, stronger, faster, and they actually know what they’re doing. In college, Carter could win with pure athleticism. That bend around the edge, that explosive first step, it was enough to blow past most tackles he faced. In the NFL, everyone’s got that first step. Everyone’s quick. The margins are so much thinner. Second, the Giants haven’t really figured out how to use him. Shane Bowen’s defensive scheme has Carter playing multiple positions. Sometimes edge, sometimes offball linebacker, sometimes even moving inside. That versatility might be good in theory, but in reality, it means Carter’s never getting comfortable in one spot. He’s not developing that instinctive feel for a position because he’s constantly being moved around. Third, and this is the part that concerns me the most, there seems to be an issue with effort and focus. Multiple sources have confirmed he’s been late to meetings all season. Now he’s missing walkthroughs or at the very least not communicating properly about where he’s supposed to be. Brian Dball apparently let all of this slide, which is insane. You can’t have your top draft pick operating by different rules than everyone else. That breeds resentment in the locker room and sends a terrible message. And fourth, he’s just not finishing plays. Those 34 quarterback pressures with only half a sack, that’s a technique issue. When you get to the quarterback, you have to convert. Either he’s getting too high in his rush or he’s not using his hands effectively or he’s just a step slow to make the play. Whatever it is, it’s coachable, but only if Carter is willing to put in the work. The tape shows a guy who sometimes gives up on plays. If his first move doesn’t work, he’ll stand up and watch instead of pursuing. That’s effort. That’s motor. That’s exactly the opposite of what made him great at Penn State, where he’s known for relentlessly chasing down ball carriers and never taking a play off. Look, I want to be optimistic about Carter’s future. The talent is obviously there. The physical tools don’t just disappear. With a new coaching staff coming in next year, maybe a fresh start is exactly what he needs. Mike Hoffka’s already shown he’s willing to hold players accountable in ways that Brian Dball apparently wasn’t. That bench against the Packers, even if it was just for one series, sent a message. The Giants still have seven games left this season. That’s seven games for Carter to start building good habits to prove he can be relied on and to show that he deserves to be a part of this team’s future. Because right now at this moment, the Abdul Carter situation is a complete disaster. The Giants invested the third overall pick, millions of dollars, and all their hopes for a defensive transformation in a player who has half a sack and is publicly denying reports about his professionalism. That’s not where anyone thought we’d be 6 months after draft night. I’ll leave you with this. There’s still time for Abdul Carter to turn this around. He’s 22 years old. Plenty of players have slow starts to their careers and figure it out, but he’s running out of excuses. The talent’s there, the opportunities there. Brian Burns is showing him every week what an elite pass rusher looks like. Dexter Lawrence is showing him what a pro acts like. Now, it’s on Carter to put it all together. Because right now, the Abdul Carter situation isn’t just disappointing, it’s emblematic of everything that’s gone wrong with this Giants team. high expectations, poor execution, lack of accountability, and complete organizational dysfunction. And until those things change, it doesn’t matter how much talent you draft, the results will be the same. Let me know what you guys think about this in the comment section down below. Aside from that, I don’t know if you guys heard, but Russell Wilson’s career is officially over. I made a separate video on that. I’m going to leave it in the end screen. I’ll meet you guys there. I’m your boy Mike. I’m dropping our mic. Until our next upload.

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