Giants' $174 Million Defense Must Prove It's Worth the Price Tag

The New York Giants’ 2025 season brought a lot of disappointment, none larger than the defense's play, the league’s second-most-expensive unit behind the Pittsburgh Steelers last season.

New York’s defense, per Over the Cap, came in at an eye-watering $135.050 million last year, and all it had to show for that was the league’s 28th-ranked unit, its 31st-ranked run defense, and its 16th-ranked pass defense.

This year, the Giants dropped from second to fourth in terms of the most expensive defense, committing $174.736 million to the unit. That puts them behind the still-league-leading Steelers, Ravens, and Bears.

But the difference for the Giants, who remade the front seven by swapping out defensive lineman Dexter Lawrence for a bunch of veterans who are mostly on one-year veteran minimum deals, and who also revamped their projected starting inside linebacker corps, lies in new defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson.

Wilson has promised a more aggressive, attacking style defense that will draw similarities to the system run by Wink Martindale from 2022-2023.

The defense promises to have a lot more disguising in its looks aimed at fooling opposing quarterbacks and creating chaos as offenses try to figure out who to block and where to attack.

Giants need to stop the run to unlock their premier-level pass rush

New York Giants linebacker Brian Burns (0) anddefensive end Chauncey Golston (57) celebrate during a game against the Minnesota Vikings at MetLife Stadium, Dec 21, 2025, East Rutherford, NJ, USA | Yannick Peterhans / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The defensive makeover will also hopefully address the multi-year problem of stopping the run.

Since 2022, the Giants' run defense has never ranked higher than 27th, hitting that mark twice (2022 and 2024).

By not being able to successfully defend the run, the defense has largely been nullified in its ability to dictate down-and-distance.

It also allowed opposing offenses to run play-action effectively; teams last year averaged 78.7 yards per game with play-action, which, per PFF data, ranked eighth-worst in the league.

More importantly, because the Giants haven’t been able to stop the run on a consistent basis, they have been unable to unleash the current strength of the unit (and the league’s second-most expensive at $65.138 million), which is their outside linebackers on the pass rush.

Wilson, new head coach John Harbaugh, and the players (who raved about the new scheme as it was being installed over the spring), are confident the result will be better and that the unit's talent is worthy of legitimate consideration for a spot in the top-10 league-wide.

That's the bet Harbaugh is making—and the one the Giants can't afford to lose.

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