3 Biggest Frustrations from the NY Giants' 2025 Season

Key Offensive Injuries

The Giants have been no strangers to seeing their most important players taken out of the equation early by a ruthless wave of injuries, and this season has been no different for some of their budding franchise cornerstones who’ve been bitten by the injury bug that seems to permanently reside in East Rutherford.

More so, it has been the offensive side of the ball that’s felt the greatest impact this fall, starting with wide receiver Malik Nabers, who was gearing up to chase and potentially beat out his stunning rookie stats from 2024 with the benefit of a bona fide passing partner now running the Giants’ helm. 

The newfound promise of that connection for the Giants’ first-round phenom gave fans an incredible sneak peek in the team’s Week 2 game against the Dallas Cowboys, when Nabers played a large role in an epic 450-yard passing performance for Russell Wilson by hauling in 9 of 13 targets for 167 yards and two moonball touchdowns in the crazy 40-37 thriller that fell just short of the win. 

By pairing the prowess of Wilson’s arm with the vertical route running threat that Nabers boasts, the Giants were preparing to be a more explosive unit that opened up a wealth of opportunities for the rest of their receiving corps and eventually presented Dart with a true No. 1 pass catcher to help him get comfortable throwing at the NFL level.

That all ended swiftly for Wilson, Dart, and company once Nabers went down with the season-ending ACL tear against the Chargers in Week 4, turning the onus quickly towards the rest of the huddle to step up and fill in the missing production he could no longer provide on Sundays. 

To this point, that challenge has largely been missed by most of the Giants’ remaining playmakers, except for Wan’Dale Robinson, who leads the team with 937 yards and five touchdowns to be on the cusp of his first 1,000-yard season as a pro but is slated to become an unrestricted free agent in March.

The absence of Nabers, mixed with the potential departure of Robinson, leaves the Giants in need of finding an additional elite playmaker who can bolster Dart’s arsenal in 2026, now that he has taken over as the starting quarterback, and it's likely they will try to address it via the draft. 

Unfortunately, the injury trend didn’t stop with just Nabers. It has also affected a few more young, developing receivers who made it onto the roster only to see a few games such as Bryce Ford-Wheaton (Achilles) and Beaux Collins (neck) and carried over into the backfield with fellow rookie Cam Skattebo who was reviving the physical run game and building a nice duo with Dart before suffering a dislocated ankle in the Giants’ Week 8 loss to Philadelphia.

To top it all off, the Giants have found themselves in a weekly situation with Dart, who has been sent to the medical tent on several occasions in just his first 11 starts after taking big hits in games while trying to keep the offense afloat and compete for the win that continues to elude them. 

Dart’s propensity to play uber-aggressively and welcome contact is something different than what has been seen from previous Giants gunslingers and has quickly created concerns over his potential longevity as the franchise signal caller if he can’t learn how to protect himself from unnecessary hits like the one that sent him to the concussion protocol for two weeks. 

In that span, the Giants have realized just how much they miss his unique set of skills when he isn’t on the field. Like the other injuries, it might have cost them winning some games down the stretch in a season full of close contests that combusted right at the end when the right playmaker was missing.

Weak Defensive Secondary

Among the positions that general manager Joe Schoen attempted to address during the offseason, he emphasized retooling the defensive secondary with a few additional pieces to address their coverage issues. 

Schoen started the offseason by signing two free agent acquisitions in cornerback Paulson Adebo and safety Jevon Holland to bolster the unit with some veteran experience that the Giants had let walk away in previous offseasons. He then added one more player in rookie Korie Black to the mix as a late-round prospect in the NFL Draft last April. 

For another year, the fruits of those moves haven’t seemed to harvest themselves in the team’s overall defensive play.

The Giants ranked 27th in coverage grade while allowing an average of 6.5 yards per play through the air last season, and now stand 25th in the league with a similar average through the first 14 games. 

Both of the Giants’ veteran additions have seen their impact limited by injuries: Adebo has appeared in only nine games, while Holland has missed two due to knee injuries. 

In their absence, the majority of the group has struggled to meet the demands of regularly covering elite pass catchers. It has been exposed at the worst times during several of their collapses.

The lone exception to the unit has been Cor’Dale Flott, who came out of camp with the starting job after battling with Deonte Banks for the role opposite of Adebo, and leads the Giants with an impressive 72.3 coverage grade and receptions allowed on just 52.5% of his targets with one touchdown, an interception, and eight forced incompletions. 

On the other hand, Banks has been a massive disappointment whenever he has received extensive reps on the outside, as he is posting his career-worst stats as a former first-round ballhawk that Schoen had immense faith in, including a team-high 87.0% opponent reception rate with three touchdowns allowed and six penalties to his name. 

The rest of the secondary has also been heavily penalized, leading to their foes earning tons of free yardage on critical plays and drives, and contributing to the Giants’ 3,413 yards (1,457 after the catch) and 24 touchdowns handed to the other side, which has helped put their defense in the bottom third of the league. 

Not all of the continued frustrations with the secondary have come from a lack of talent or experience on the roster, though.

A major part of their dysfunction has been the result of the defensive system in place under Shane Brown and the decision to play in extremely soft zone coverages in the biggest moments of select games when they had a fourth-quarter lead. 

The Giants have lost at least a handful of games this year with at least a one-score lead entering the final frame, and the rest of the team was left to watch as opponents marched downfield in only a few plays using chunk passes against loose coverage and little presence over the middle. 

The trend eventually cost the defensive coordinator his job and the Giants' chances of having a slightly better record with some impressive wins to look back on. 

Even beyond that, the Giants' collection of ballhawks has been unable to master the fundamentals of their positions and avoid mistakes that cost the defense yards.

A lot of times, they get burnt for not keeping their heads on a swivel or for missing out on turnover opportunities by not getting back to the ball. 

Sure, the secondary is still fairly young, but it will be pivotal to find the right pieces who can make it a strength again, as it was before the current regime arrived.

The right leader who won’t just turn to prevent defense with the game on the line, either, would also be nice, so the pass rush can have the time it needs to make the impact plays down the stretch.

The Kicking Debacle

It’s hard to find many elements of the Giants’ 2025 season that are more irritating to even the common observer of the team than another round of their debacles on special teams, and in particular, the kicking carousel that continues to spin around and embarrass the franchise on the gridiron every week. 

Finding a quality and consistent kicker in the modern NFL almost seems like a guarantee given many of the game’s current figures can nail big boots from long ranges with little to no sweat, but general manager Joe Schoen has had that position become a big stain on his Giants resume as each answer he brings into the building never seems to pan out in the long term. 

Despite handing the incumbent veteran Graham Gano a new three-year deal at the start of the 2023 season following a solid and consistent stat line the year before, the return on the investment has been a disaster as Gano’s availability has been severely capped by injuries over the next two campaigns. 

In 2024, Gano appeared in just ten games after suffering a hamstring ailment while attempting to prevent a kickoff return in the Giants' Week 2 loss to the Washington Commanders. 

The injury forced the Giants to use two extra kickers, Jude McAtamney and Greg Joseph, neither of whom was very effective from deep range, as Gano once was. 

Then this season, the Giants chose to ignore the reality of health and age concerns building with Gano, who entered the year at 38 years old and didn’t bring in a second proven kicker to compete with him in camp or potentially go to the practice squad for insurance if Gano had won the job fair and square. 

That decision would go terribly wrong for New York and highlight some of the roster malpractice stemming from the front office.

Gano suffered a pregame groin injury ahead of facing the Chargers in Week 4 that left the Giants without a kicker for the entirety of that game and put the duties onto punter Jamie Gillan, who was ill-prepared to hold up in a close 21-18 affair. 

The worst part was the Giants knowing that Gano’s groin was barking during the week in practice and still going with him as the lone option, which didn’t last very long. 

He returned for two more games, where he wasn’t fully himself and missed a 45-yard field goal attempt at the end of the first half against San Francisco in Week 9, before going to the IR with a neck ailment that has ended his season. 

The second consecutive midseason loss has left the Giants scrambling to piece together the basic foundation of their special teams department for the rest of the schedule, which has been horrific even beyond the kicking issue. 

They started by giving McAtamney a second chance in front of Younghoe Koo, whom they signed to the practice squad as a backup to the international-exemption player.

McAtamney wasn’t ready for the spotlight, missing three extra points in two games, including the first two that cost the Giants an upset win over the Denver Broncos that changed the course of their season. 

Koo would take over for the next five games, and while he had more NFL experience than McAtamney through prior stints with the Chargers and Falcons, he couldn’t maintain his consistency for very long. Koo missed his own extra point in the loss to the Packers and was just released by the Giants after shanking two field goals to the wide left in their latest loss to Washington. 

In total, that is five different kickers that the Giants have had to entrust the reins to since the start of the 2024 season, all of which have failed miserably and made it very difficult for the team to perform at its best in the other two phases of the game. 

With Koo gone, they’ve now called up rookie Ben Sauls from the practice squad and will try their luck with the novice who has yet to take his first kick at the NFL level after a college stint with the University of Pittsburgh. 

The Giants only have three games left in their season, making the move almost meaningless, but it’s fair to wonder if we will see more miscues on Sunday against the Vikings, whose special teams unit is ranked No. 1 in the league. 

Looking past the 2025 season, the kicking debacle is one of the many failures that could end up costing Schoen his job when Giants brass figures to decide on his fate in the coming weeks and one the organization must fix before 2026, no matter who is in charge of retooling the roster. 

There really is no reason for the team to be missing the mark in the most basic element on the football field, especially when fans are subjected to seeing the other 31 teams thrive every week, and with some kickers nailing 60-yard game winners fresh off the streets in big environments.