Matt Nagy Explains Why Giants' Offense Isn't Fully Installed With Camp Winding Down

New York Giants offensive coordinator Matt Nagy didn’t mince any words when offering an opinion about how the team’s offense looked during Tuesday’s practice.

“Today was an average practice, maybe below average. It wasn't good enough,” Nagy said.

That assessment might not sit well with Giants fans, but as Nagy explained, the Giants are about “halfway through our run install and halfway through our pass install” as they try to figure out what type of plays suit quarterback Jaxson Dart and the offense the best.

Halfway through? With the season’s start just a month away?

It sounds bad, but Nagy explained that what the Giants are in fact doing is figuring out what clicks with the second-year quarterback as they look to further his and the offense’s development.

“I just go back personally to OTAs, and when we were first teaching this thing, we spent phase two just kind of trying to teach this thing from the ground up in buckets and phases, and not necessarily plays,” he said.

“We spent several weeks just teaching the concepts and teaching whether it's run or pass, circles. We called it musical chairs, not positions. Everybody had to know the concept, so we weren't running plays. So, we spent some time with them to understand, ‘Hey, if I'm in this spot or this spot, what do I do?’ That's how you understand the basis of an offense.

“And then, now we get to phase three, and you take it to training camp, and now we're running plays, and we get to see, ‘Okay, not only are we doing what we do, but now we get to see a crazy defense with (Defensive Coordinator) Dennard (Wilson) and what he does.’”

What has transpired, as Nagy said, is some subpar showings from Dart that have some people understandably concerned. But Nagy said that Dart is calling every play correctly, and that it’s just a matter of “taking it to the next level,” which is to execute against a live defense that is throwing everything it has at him.

Dart and the offense will get their first crack at putting everything together against the Minnesota Vikings on Saturday, which brings in a Brian Flores-led defense that last year totally flummoxed Dart to the tune of a career-worst 33 passing yards on seven completions.

While this weekend’s clash won’t involve game-planning, the Vikings still pose a good challenge for the young quarterback to take what he’s learned in working against his own complex-looking defense and begin tying everything together.

In the meantime, Nagy is preaching patience with Dart, a tall order for a fan base that is expecting a lot more wins this year than what the team delivered in years past.

“When I say (have patience), we have an idea of what we want to do. I'm talking play-wise – big picture we know – play-wise, you start to build a little bit of a library of what our guys do well,” Nagy said.

“We're not going to give them stuff that we just want to do because we want to do it. If we do something, it's because they like it and they do a good job at it in any phase of the game. Putting all that together and cutting it loose, it's going to be here quickly.

“Whether it's walkthrough, group install, or competitive, we have a lot of stuff on tape right now that we're able to pull and look at and decide what we want to do.”

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