New Stat Underscores Key Area for NY Giants’ Offense to Improve

Last season, the New York Giants finished 27th in the league in third-down conversion rate (35.34%). While that’s a team-owned stat, one position group on the offense that didn’t help matters, either by design or other circumstances, was the tight ends, a statistical analysis by Gridiron Intelligence revealed. 

Their data showed that the Giants ranked in the bottom five league-wide in both passing to their tight ends and converting on third down.

Using data generated from NFL Savant, of the Giants’ 232 third-down conversion attempts last year, 180 were pass attempts. And per The Football Database, while the Giants' tight ends were targeted just 19 times on third down, catching 12 such passes, the actual conversion rate wasn’t quite as impressive.

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Going back to NFL Savant’s data, Theo Johnson and Daniel Bellinger both converted just two third-down pass conversions apiece. Bellinger’s two conversions came on plays needing three or fewer yards, whereas Johnson’s two came on third-downs needing 6+ yards.

Johnson’s numbers might have been even better had he not had a couple of plays wiped out by penalties and one misplayed ball sent his way that resulted in an interception. 

Granted, it didn’t help that Johnson missed the final five games of the season with a foot injury, but again, when he was in there, he put that big body and wide catch radius of, his combined with above-average athleticism to good use in picking up the needed yardage.

The key takeaways from this data are that the Giants' tight ends were often an afterthought when it came to third-down dependability, as New York tended to favor their receivers. 

The question moving forward is if the Giants, who are likely to go back to assistant head coach/offensive coordinator Mike Kafka as the team’s play caller this season, get the tight ends a little bit more involved on third-down plays.

It probably wouldn’t hurt to do so, especially if receivers Wan’Dale Robinson and Malik Nabers, the two most targeted Giants receiving options on third downs last year, draw even more attention this coming season on the money down. 

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