Why the Giants Pass Rush Has Found Success Despite Lack of Top-shelf Pass Rusher

The last time the New York Giants defense ranked in the top 10 of the league in sacks was in 2014 when they finished fourth that season behind Buffalo, Philadelphia, and the Ravens with 47 sacks.

That season, the Giants had defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul lead the way with double-digit sacks (12.5), with three other teammates—defensive tackle Johnathan Hankins (7.0), defensive end Damontre Moore (5.5), and defensive end Robert Ayers (5.0), all chipping into the pot.

Last season, despite now-former outside linebacker Markus Golden reaching double-digit sacks (10.0), the Giants didn’t get much production from a young group of pass rushers. Their next two highest contributors were edge rushers Lorenzo Carter and Oshane Ximines, who had 4.5 sacks apiece. As a result, the Giants only mustered up 36 sacks, 22nd in the league.

This year is a much different story. The 2020 Giants have recorded 20, which ties them with Denver for the league's eighth-best mark. Not bad for a team that right now doesn't project to produce a double-digit sack candidate among their pass rushers, the closest perhaps being defensive lineman Leonard Williams, whose four sacks project to eight for a 16-game season.

That hasn’t mattered because defensive coordinator Patrick Graham has been able to do something that his recent predecessors with the team haven’t: Against mostly mobile quarterbacks, he's generated a pass rush via the scheme.

That's no small potatoes either, as mobile quarterbacks are tricky to bring down and usually force a defense to assign a spy to ensure the quarterback is contained.

“When I first got in the league, we didn't have to deal with that many quarterbacks that can move,” Graham said.

“Just go down, up and down the list of quarterbacks we played. We've dealt with every week is a quarterback that can move. So that's probably the challenge."

The key to winning that challenge and unlocking the pass rush has been, in Graham’s words, “caging the quarterback up.”

That has involved creating matchups that favor the pass rush, intensive study of opponents’ tendencies, and, to a certain degree, being patient rather than swinging for the fences on every rush, especially since the introduction of RPOs that allow quarterbacks to exploit overaggressive pass rushers.

“I think it’s less chess pieces moving around,” Graham said. “It's more of these guys—our guys—just figuring out ways to get to the quarterback.”

A big part of that is also knowing how to play it on third-and-long situations, specific to sending an all-out blitz or just a three- or four-man front in the hopes of at least moving the quarterback off his mark.

Graham said that a few things go into that decision, starting with how many people the Giants have to devote to coverage, e.g., do they need to double team anyone, or can they get by with single man coverage.

Then it comes down to the quarterback's experience. "To me, in those third and long situations, when you play zone sometimes, I get worried sometimes based on the experience of the quarterback," Graham said.

"Sometimes I like to be on him more based on the experience of the quarterback if they’re younger."

Then there is a matter of what point the game is at.

"If it’s the end of the game, you need the play, you might want to force the ball out quick, so you bring a certain rush to get the ball out quick. If it’s early in the game and just a little bit more conservative by nature, then you might three-man rush it. Try to manipulate it so you can get some pressure off of it," Graham said.

There is still a lot more work and progress Graham and the rest of the coaching staff would like to see, but the early results have been encouraging.

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