Why Giants’ Insistence on Flott-Banks CB Rotation is a Headscratcher

If Cor'Dale Flott is besting Deonte Banks on defense, shouldn't he be playing more full time on the outside?

New York Giants cornerbacks Deonte Banks (3) and Cordale Flott (28). | Lucas Boland-Imagn Images

According to the eye test and backed by the stats, New York Giants cornerback Cor’Dale Flott, who has rotated with Deonte Banks at CB2, is clearly outplaying his younger counterpart.

So why then would the Giants insist on staying with a rotation that doesn’t appear to be helping them?

“I think they've been competitive. We gave up that big one, a big 87-yarder, which we'd like to have back. Other than that, I don't think there was an explosive play throughout the game yesterday,” head coach Brian Daboll said on Monday when asked specifically about the defensive secondary on the whole. 

“I thought they did a good job of hanging in there when we turned the ball over five times and gave them opportunity after opportunity, to only come away with 13 points instead of more than that. It was a good thing for them.” 

Still, there’s no denying the film or the numbers and what they suggest, which is that Flott has been the steadier of the two, Flott currently with an 85.4 passer rating and zero penalties, and Flott having allowed 66.7% of the pass targets against him to be caught, whereas Banks has allowed 75%.  

If the Giants coaching staff is all about doing what’s best for the team. Why not just go with one guy consistently and let opposing offenses figure out how to beat them, rather than advertising that they’re planning for the pass, which is what they’ve been doing, given that 77 of Banks’s 100 defensive snaps so far this season have come in coverage? 

“It's a week-to-week thing,” defensive coordinator Shane Bowen said. “We talk about it every week about how we're going to go in and handle some of the stuff, and based on skill sets, what we're trying to ask these guys to do potentially, but it's going to be an ongoing evaluation for us.”

Still, the insistence on putting Banks out there remains a headscratcher. The third-year cornerback currently has a career-worst 154.2 NFL coverage rating, and his four penalties amassed so far have him on pace to top the eight he recorded last year.

Are the Giants, for instance, doing so because Banks is a first-round draft pick for whom they traded up to acquire and on whom they have to decide regarding his option year after this season?

Or is Bowen simply following his marching orders to where he doesn’t have the full autonomy to make the bigger picture decisions?

“These players earn what they get when they get here. That's how it is,” Bowen said when asked if he had full autonomy to decide. 

“That's how it's been. I think that as a staff, it's something we discuss day in and day out: how the guys are performing, where they stand, and what we think is best in terms of game plans, match-ups, and other factors. But it's about finding the guys that can put us in the best position to win.”

So again, the question needs to be asked: if Flott is playing better than Banks, how does taking him off the field in obvious passing downs put the team in “the best position to win” as Bowen and Daboll have claimed is the goal?  

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