A Tale of Two Giants First-round Draft Picks: OLB Kayvon Thibodeaux and OT Evan Neal

The 2024 season is a big one for the New York Giants' two first-round draft picks.

Giants general manager Joe Schoen with first-round picks Evan Neal, center, and Kayvon Thibodeaux, right. / Art Stapleton/NorthJersey.com / USA

Thanks to unloading wide receiver Kadarius Toney a year and a half into his rookie contract, the New York Giants didn’t have to worry about picking up Toney’s fifth-year option for the 2025 campaign.

But come next year, the Giants will have to make two decisions on their 2022 first-round draft picks: outside linebacker Kayvon Thibodeaux and right tackle Evan Neal. And while there is still a season to be played, both decisions will likely be no-brainers for general manager Joe Schoen.

The forthcoming decision on Thibodeaux should be easy, given how he has shown progress from Year 1 to Year 2 and is expected to take yet another leap forward now that he can look forward to playing as part of a pass-rush trio that also consists of fellow outside linebacker Brian Burns and interior defensive lineman Dexter Lawrence II. 

• RELATED: Kayvon Thibodeaux Explains Why Single-Season Sack Record is Important to Him

Thibodeaux has grown each year since entering the NFL as he did at Oregon. As a rookie, he recorded 45 pressures (four sacks) in 466 pass-rushing snaps. 

Last season, he played in 520 pass-rushing snaps and recorded 43 pressures and 11.5 sacks—totals that might have been even higher had former defensive coordinator Wink Martindale not had him drop into coverage on 84 of his defensive snaps. 

When lined up in a true pass set, which he did 193 times last season, Thibodeaux generated 26 of his pressures and nine of his sacks for a 10.6 percent pass-rush win rate.

That kind of production aligned with what he produced in his final season at Oregon, where he was in a true pass set in 127 pass-rushing attempts, generating 28 of his 47 pressures and five of his seven sacks that season for a 14.2 pass-rush win rate.

Neal, the seventh overall pick in the 2022 draft, has not developed into a serviceable draft pick in two seasons with the team. In two seasons, he’s allowed 81 pressures for a 94.2 pass-blocking efficiency rating, his 52 pressures in 15 games played his rookie season tying him for third-most among offensive tackles. 

While injuries have been part of Neal’s issues—his 2023 season ended early thanks to an ankle injury—Neal has never quite looked comfortable lining up at right tackle, a position he played just one year of college ball (2020) at during his time at Alabama. 

Yet the Giants brass has insisted that Neal can play right tackle at this level even though he played on the left side of the line in two of his three college seasons. 

That insistence could be because in 2020, when Neal lined up at right tackle almost exclusively for the Crimson Tide, he posted his best pass-block efficiency rating (98.6), allowing a career-low nine pressures.

However, a closer look shows that his time spent as a left guard during the 2019 season wasn’t far from his 2020 performance. In 2019, Neal played all his snaps at left guard, allowing 12 pressures (one sack) in 723 snaps for a 98.4 efficiency rating. 

With Andrew Thomas firmly entrenched at left tackle, some have opined that the Giants might be wise to cross-train Neal at left guard to see if that might be a better fit. And that could be a possibility this summer. 

When asked if there were plans to move the third-year player around, head coach Brian Daboll left the door ajar about the possibility of Neal, who is still recovering from season-ending ankle surgery, cross-training at another position. 

“Yeah, we'll start him at right tackle,” Daboll said. 

The bottom line is that the Giants need both Thibodeaux and Neal to deliver the goods in a big year ahead, not just for both and their future with the team, but for the team as it looks to rebound from a disappointing 6-11 season.

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