Giants' Safety Tyler Nubin Reflects on Promising First NFL Season

In a rarely successful draft class that’s garnered general manager Joe Schoen and the New York Giants organization a welcoming dose of praise, one player who they’ve seemed to hit the bullseye on for a potential leader is rookie safety Tyler Nubin. 

Like a couple of his teammates who made their debuts this season, Nubin, the Giants’ second-round pick out of Minnesota, was no different in that he had an immediate role to fill for the defense. 

He was to be the heir apparent to the starting free safety spot held by Xavier McKinney for the past four years and do so with the same admirable production. 

Replacing McKinney would be a tough ask, especially considering he was one of the Giants’ top tacklers in two of his four seasons and forced 10 total turnovers in the same span. Moreover, he was also deemed a main voice in New York’s locker room beyond the nature of his position and often demanded communication on the field on Sundays.

Nevertheless, the 23-year-old Nubin had no issues discharging those early duties as he became one of the Giants’ new ironman players in the first couple of months of the season. His efforts would result in an impressive stat sheet of 98 total tackles (57 solo), four tackles for loss, and one pass deflection that would ascend and still finish second on the defensive leaderboard in limited time. 

It was a fast yet fruitful first campaign for the young safety that rode through a bunch of personal and collective ups and downs as the Giants navigated through a difficult 3-14 result in their historic 100th season, but it was not all in vain in his eyes.

Instead, it presented Nubin an excellent opportunity to grow in many ways and learn how to rise from the ashes with his teammates so that they can return stronger than ever for the next hopeful season ahead. 

“I would say growth,” Nubin said during a Giants.com interview about the most defining part of his 2024 rookie season. 

“I felt like I grew a lot this year, not only as a football player but as a man too. Just being around the guys, being around this great staff, and grinding every day. Just growing together and growing through those pains but getting better at the same time.”

The personal side of those challenges would come way too soon, as Nubin was tearing up the league at the high safety position. In the first seven weeks, he was the leading tackler on the Giants roster, including forcing a span of 35 stops in four games after notching three straight contests with nine against the Seahawks, Bengals, and Eagles. 

Most of those negative plays would come in the backfield or around the line of scrimmage as Nubin got his hands dirty in slowing down the opponents’ run game. 

Still, there was a good chunk—eight to be exact that led the entire secondary—that came in coverage against the pass and helped him collect three extra games with 12 total tackles consecutively. 

Just when it looked like all that preparation over the summer would pan out, and he would wind up leading the entire defense in production, Nubin hit his first personal road bump with an ankle injury in Week 14. The ailment would cap his debut four weeks early and force him to consume the rest of his rookie reps from the sidelines while supporting his fellow cornerbacks.

While Nubin admitted that it was hard to be distanced from the game due to an injury, he noted that the hardest part as a professional came down to winning the mental battle of not being able to play and staying engaged with everything that was still going on in the team’s weekly preparations.

“It’s really more of a mental thing, especially in trying to get back and really get back into it, but also being away from the game because you put so much into it,” Nubin said. 

“I’ve been doing this my whole life, and it’s really hard to be away from the game that you love, so it’s really more of a mental thing than physical because you’re always going to be working. I’m young, and I feel like I’m going to recover well, but the mental part is what’s been the toughest.”