![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Screenshot-2026-02-09-at-9.33.51\u202fPM.png\"\/)
<\/a><\/p>\nData courtesy of Pro Football Focus<\/p>\n
One of the interesting things is that 10 of those key defensive players were already on the team in 2023, 6 of them playing a major number of snaps. That team, which went 9-8, only gave up 37 fewer points (2.2 points fewer per game) than the terrible 2025 Giants defense did, suggesting that they already had a lot of the right players but just didn\u2019t have the coaching. A year later, Seattle GM John Schneider added two defensive pieces in the draft, DT Byron Murphy in Round 1 and ILB Tyrice Knight in Round 4. They also added a UFA, CB Josh Jobe, who started at left CB but has been a subpar player throughout his career. They now had Macdonald, but that team still lost to the Giants.<\/p>\n
This year, Seattle only added one draftee of note on defense, safety Nick Emmanwori, who became a starter by mid-season and played well. They made one notable free agent signing, DeMarcus Lawrence, whom Dallas had let walk after a season in which he suffered a lisfranc injury and was not willing at age 33 to take a pay cut. Lawrence returned to his earlier form in 2025 in Seattle.<\/p>\n
The point of all this is that with only a couple of major additions to the defense in 2024 and a couple more in 2025, the Seahawks went from one of the worst defenses in the NFL to the consensus best defense in the NFL in two years. Mike Macdonald and his staff have to get a lot of the credit for that improvement, even if it took two years to fully accomplish.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s compare 2023 Seattle to the present Giants. The 2023 Seahawks went 9-8, a far cry from the Giants\u2019 4-13, so it\u2019s not apples to apples. Still, you can argue that the Giants let 5 victories slip through their hands with late defensive collapses (Dallas, Denver, Green Bay, Detroit, Chicago) and could have been as good as 9-8.<\/p>\n
The Seahawks appear to have had more defensive talent when Macdonald arrived than John Harbaugh and Dennard Wilson find themselves with now. (Some of that of course is courtesy of Joe Schoen, who directly or indirectly sent them Leonard Williams and Julian Love.) The only truly elite players were Devon Witherspoon and Lawrence, but they had several above-average players in Love, Williams, and Mafe.<\/p>\n
The problem with assessing the Giants\u2019 defense is separating player talent from player coaching and defensive scheme. Let\u2019s categorize the Giants\u2019 primary defensive players as things stand presently:<\/p>\n
Present\/future stars: Brian Burns, Abdul Carter<\/p>\n
Once a star, now an enigma: Dexter Lawrence, Kayvon Thibodeaux, Bobby Okereke<\/p>\n
Rising, but how far?: Cor\u2019Dale Flott, Micah McFadden, Dane Belton<\/p>\n
Solid or above average players before becoming Giants: Paulson Adebo, Jevon Holland<\/p>\n
Young unproven players: Deonte Banks, Tyler Nubin, Andru Phillips, Darius Alexander<\/p>\n
The glass-half-full picture is that the Giants already have most of what they need on defense, and that with better coaching and defensive schemes, they are only a couple of players away from being a good defense. The glass-half-empty view is that only Burns, Carter, and perhaps Flott and McFadden are keepers, and that any or most of the others could be ex-Giants by September.<\/p>\n
Here are the progressions of PFF overall defense grades for some of these players (the ones with the biggest question marks about their futures) over the last five years or however long they have been in the NFL if less than that:<\/p>\n
Lawrence: 68.6, 91.6, 92.9, 89.9, 75.6Thibodeaux: 72.5, 58.4, 69.0, 66.0Okereke: 58.5, 73.3, 79.0, 74.9, 56.3Adebo: 60.3, 49.1, 78.6, 63.3, 58.4Holland: 84.7, 67.2, 90.4, 63.0, 58.4Banks: 51.5, 50.9, 42.4Nubin: 65.8, 57.2Phillips: 78.5, 63.0<\/p>\n
Each of these players was at one time considered the answer at their position, but each performed worse in 2024 and\/or 2025 than they had historically:<\/p>\n
Lawrence blossomed under Andre Patterson, becoming arguably the best IDL this side of Aaron Donald for two seasons. Then came his elbow injury and a corresponding decrease in his lining up in the A-gap relative to the B-gap, and his play declined. Lawrence apparently re-injured the elbow<\/a> in November. He has also gained weight. Will he be healthy in the 2026 season? Will Harbaugh and Wilson get him back in shape, and where will they line him up?Thibodeaux is in some sense a better all-around player now than he was when he came into the league. His run defense overall was the best it\u2019s been in his four years according to PFF, but it\u2019s a mixed bag – his run \u201cstop\u201d (unsuccessful running play) rate has gotten higher, but his missed tackles have increased and his sack rate has decreased. Thibodeaux missed the final seven games with injury, so we did not get to see whether Charley Bullen replacing Shane Bowen would have affected his play.Okereke was a revelation under Wink Martindale in 2023, playing the best pass coverage of his career and becoming a force in pressuring the quarterback. Under Bowen though Okereke rarely rushed, and especially in 2025 his run defense was awful, with the highest missed tackle rate of his career.Adebo peaked in 2023 and wasn\u2019t as good before getting injured in 2024. His first season as a Giant was even worse. He\u2019s only given up 1, 1, and 2 TDs in the past three seasons after yielding 4 and 5 in his first two years, but his passer rating against, which was an impressive 69.9 and 67.0 in 2023 and 2024, jumped to 92.0 in his first year as a Giant.Holland had two elite years as a Dolphin, but those alternated with two mediocre seasons. His first Giants season was the worst of his career by overall PFF grade, and especially in pass coverage, but he continued a career-long trend of fitting the run well. Is the real Jevon Holland a good or a so-so player?Banks supposedly is a better man than zone corner, but after showing promise in the first half of his rookie year, the impression is now that he can\u2019t really play either scheme at the NFL level. Assuming he is even on the roster (he\u2019s a good kick returner if nothing else), can the new coaching staff get any useful defensive play from him?Nubin is arguably one of Schoen\u2019s most disappointing picks, given that he was a ballhawk in college and has yet to intercept even one pass in two NFL seasons. If that isn\u2019t bad enough, his run defense and tackling, which were good in his rookie season, cratered in his sophomore year, encapsulated by the poor angles, slow reaction times, and subpar speed he showed on many long runs. Can Harbaugh and his staff find the player he was at Minnesota?Phillips is a player I was excited about in his rookie season. He was a demon in run coverage and did well enough in pass coverage. In Year 2, though, his run defense regressed and his pass coverage limitations began to be exposed. The question is whether Phillips can operate successfully in the NFL anywhere except near the line of scrimmage.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s eight big question marks, a lot to have for one defense. Several of them may be answered as early as next month if Harbaugh and Schoen decide to release players like Okereke and Banks and\/or trade someone like Thibodeaux. That just creates question marks of a different kind, though, since replacements don\u2019t currently exist on the roster.<\/p>\n
If Harbaugh and Wilson can instead answer even half these questions positively, by making them better players working under better defensive schemes, and Schoen can hit on a draft pick and a free agent, then perhaps the 2026 Giants defense can become something like what Macdonald and Schneider turned the Seahawks\u2019 defense into in 2024. Maybe by 2027 we\u2019ll look back and say that, like the Seahawks pre-Macdonald, 10 of the Giants key defensive players were already on the roster in 2025, and it just took good coaching and a couple more players to make them contenders. If not, and WYSIWYG with the current roster, then it may be a long road to playoff contention, Harbaugh or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There used to be an old NFL saying, attributed to Bear Bryant, \u201cDefense wins championships.\u201d For a long…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,1870,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-749984","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-new-york-giants-analysis","10":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116065096859490012","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}