NY Giants Need to Turn Abdul Carter Loose on Defense

Imagine having a premium weapon on your football team, but not taking full advantage of deploying it every chance possible.

Meet the , who, after landing outside linebacker Abdul Carter third overall in this year’s draft, seemingly limited the rookie’s defensive snap counts on defense to 38 because of the three outside linebackers on the team–Brian Burns and Kayvon Thibodeaux being the other two–Carter was given five additional snaps on special teams.

Such was the explanation of head coach Brian Daboll.

“You want to rotate those guys, try to keep them as fresh as you can,” he said on Monday. “We knew that Abdul was going to be on that punt team and again, just trying to keep those guys as fresh as we can with the packages that we have.”

The snap count breakdown, according to the official game book, had Carter with 43 total snaps (38 on defense, five on special teams); Thibodeaux with 55 (52 on defense, three on special teams), and Burns with 48 (47 on defense, one on special teams).

That doesn’t appear to be a significant rotation; rather, it seems to be trying to evenly distribute the snaps among the three.

While one can appreciate Daboll’s wanting to keep guys fresh, such a conservative approach isn’t necessarily the best approach to winning football games, as playing one’s best players is.

Unless Carter is nursing an undisclosed injury, there doesn’t appear to be any logical reason to limit his snaps, especially if he’s being productive in whatever he’s being asked to do.

Carter, per PFF, was deployed , 24 on the pass rush, and three in coverage. a couple of times inside, had six snaps at inside linebacker, and the rest were spent on the edge in what seemed like defensive coordinator Shane Bowen trying to figure out where best to optimize the rookie’s diverse talents.

The rookie finished with three tackles, one of which was a solo effort, a half sack, and one quarterback hit on defense. He did not log any tackles on special teams, where he played all of his snaps on the punt coverage unit.

“We want to keep those guys as fresh as we can,” Daboll reiterated. “I think they did a pretty good job relative to the roles.

“A couple of things we can improve on in that area, but those three guys are going to play a lot. Try to balance out the numbers the best job you can so they can be as fresh as they can be.”

Again, Daboll’s intentions might be honorable, but for a team that has to win games, putting the team’s best players on any sort of pitch count outside of an injury-related matter just doesn’t seem conducive to achieving that goal in a game where players go all out once a week.

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