This New York Giants Player Predicted as Potential Biggest Disappoint in 2021
A week after naming rookie receiver Kadarius Toney as the Giants’ potential biggest off-season regret, Kristopher Knox of Bleacher Report is back with another gloom-and-doom prediction for the former Florida receiver, nominating him as the Giants one player who could disappoint in 2021.
Knox, in naming some successful receivers who exploded onto the scene as rookies, such as Seattle’s D.K. Metcalf and Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson theorizes:
Those expecting New York Giants first-round pick Kadarius Toney to be an instant difference-maker in the level of Metcalf or Jefferson could be disappointed. The Florida product has undeniable speed, but he's extremely raw as a route-runner.
Toney may primarily be a gadget player early in his career, and while there's value in that, many New York fans may be disappointed that he isn't an instant 1,000-yard pass-catcher.
The Giants once had a rookie receiver, Odell Beckham Jr, who, for a time, was the center of their world.
The problem is opponents knew it, and they very easily figured out ways to stop Beckham and force the Giants to beat them in other ways.
Current Giants head coach Joe Judge, who comes from the schools of Saban and Belichick, realizes that a team cannot put all their eggs in one basket for an offense to be successful, that the team has to play matchup football.
That means there is less likely to be a dependence on a single player, be it a receiver or a running back, and more emphasis on exploiting the opponent’s weakest link with a different player every week.
What does all this have to do with Toney? To suggest that if he doesn’t hit 1,000 yards receiving means he’d be a disappointment is shortsighted because that’s not how this Giants offense operates under the current coaching staff.
Toney, remember, is likely going to share some of the slot snaps with Sterling Shepard, the incumbent.
And if offensive coordinator Jason Garrett comes up with other ways to make use of Toney’s gifts, such as having him run a few gadget plays, then so what? Isn’t this game all about individual contributions which may or may not come from outside-the-box thinking?
And this argument about Toney being a raw route runner doesn’t hold water. Toney is going to be coached up by Giants receivers coach Tyke Tolbert, who, by the way, helped Darius Slayton sand off some of the rough spots in his route running to where Slayton made a nice impact as a rookie.
However, the most significant counterargument against Knox’s prediction is that the Giants aren’t going to feature one specific player every week in the passing game.
The Giants, remember, have Toney, Shepard, Darius Slayton, Kenny Golladay, Evan Engram, Kyle Rudolph, and Saquon Barkley as receiving options.
That’s a lot of pass targets for quarterback Daniel Jones, and again, if you remember the Giants’ core philosophy about not consistently homing in on one specific guy every week, you just can’t expect all of them to put up monster numbers.
And if they all don’t hit the 1,000-yard receiving mark, that doesn’t mean they are disappointments, not so long as the Giants post a few more W’s, which is the most important number at the end of the day.
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