Giants Need to Overcome this Huge Weakness from 2024

When the great Eli Manning held down the fort for 16 mostly illustrious years, the New York Giants realized how spoiled they were by his ability to put the team on his shoulders and execute the epic comeback.

The two-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback did it many times, even when most people thought he didn’t have that same level of talent left in the tank at the end of his career.

Per Pro Football Reference, Manning commanded 27 fourth-quarter comebacks and 37 game-winning drives, including nine in his last three seasons and another nine in the postseason.

It was one of the main reasons Manning, who missed induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame when the new inductees were announced this past February, will ultimately get into Canton someday.

It is also partly responsible for the Giants' struggles since Manning retired at the end of the 2019 season and why fans have longed for his true successor to arrive in East Rutherford.

Any of their answers at the helm, including former No. 6 overall pick Daniel Jones, couldn’t replicate the same ice-in-the-veins superpower that the game’s best quarterbacks possess to get their teams over the hump.

That is why a new analysis by Pro Football Network has signaled that the Giants need to use the offseason to discern solutions, including a potential influx of talent, to overcome what they deemed the franchise’s biggest weakness during the 2024 season.

“The New York Giants failed to show resilience in 2024 at a nearly historic level,” the analysis said. “New York lost all 12 of its games in which it went into the halftime locker room with a deficit, the second-most such losses without a victory in a single season during the 2000s, with the lone exception being the winless Cleveland team in 2017 (0-14 in such spots).”

“The best teams can overcome adversity like this (all 11 teams who posted a 40% win rate or higher in these spots made the playoffs), and the Giants’ league-worst red-zone offense certainly played a big part in this.”

Former New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones — Nov 10, 2024; Munich, Germany; New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones (8) prepares to take the snap against the Carolina Panthers in the first half during the 2024 NFL Munich Game at Allianz Arena. | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

The Giants’ experiment with Daniel Jones had some bright moments regarding rallying in the toughest quarter of contests, particularly during the 2022 season when the Giants had their lone year of success behind the former first-round pick.

Jones, who finished with a 24-44-1 record under center for New York, turned heads with five consecutive fourth-quarter comebacks from Weeks 4 to 8 that season.

The most impressive was arguably the 24-20 victory over the Baltimore Ravens in Week 7, when the Giants rode Jones’ 70.3% completion rating for 173 yards and two touchdowns to overcome a 20-10 Baltimore lead in the final frame, helped by some timely defensive turnovers as well.

Jones was nearly perfect during that same span, tossing just one interception and punching the football into the endzone at the seventh-best rate in the NFL, 63.3%. Since then, a lack of confidence and poor protection up front has made it impossible for him to replicate those numbers.

Fast-forward to this past season and the Giants had fallen to the league’s worst success rate inside the 20-yard line: 43.2%, which resulted in them averaging just 16.1 points per contest.

The Giants’ other three gunslingers never made a difference in the 3-14 campaign, either, and the team did not have one fourth-quarter or game-winning drive.

Something about that inefficiency has to give in 2025 as the Giants approach a must-win season for Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll. It’s very hard to win in the modern NFL when you can’t put points on the board, and we’ve seen time and time again how the ones who can execute in the biggest period of the game are the ones that make the history books.

Part of the problem is personnel, as the Giants need more playmakers who know how to turn it on when the clock is getting closer to the final set of zeros.

They found one such player in wide receiver Malik Nabers last offseason in the draft, but that same progress must be made through additional weapons in secondary roles, with one of the team’s trusty targets, Darius Slayton, likely leaving in free agency.

However, the other half needs to fall on coaching and play calling, something to which there were many headscratchers over the course of last season. Daboll has that responsibility in his lap as he mulls handing the play sheet back over to Mike Kafka this fall, and the two need to get the Giants back to an explosive style of offense that makes teams get more nervous when facing them.

Outside of Jones, the Giants lacked a single quarterback in the top 40 players in terms of explosive play completions, with Drew Lock holding four throws for 121 yards, one touchdown, and one interception. Josh Allen, whom Daboll bred up in Buffalo as the offensive coordinator, used to always boast that deep arm and finished tied for sixth in the same metrics.

It is certainly no simple fix, but one that, if left unaddressed by a regime that was supposed to have a penchant for building a high-powered offense as they did with the Bills, it won’t be long before another group conquers the task. The 2025 season will be no less competitive as the Giants face a gauntlet of a schedule with teams that can load up the scoreboard.

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