NY Giants D-line Ranked Among NFL’s Best Ahead of the 2025 Season

Coming soon to a gridiron near you: a vastly upgraded New York Giants defensive line and a pass rush that, if fully healthy, is about to unleash all kinds of new havoc on that tough slate of opponents that lines the team’s 2025 schedule.

Giants fans, of course, knew this after witnessing how general manager Joe Schoen transformed a unit that was woefully understaffed and, except for all-world defender Dexter Lawrence II, lacked any sort of firepower. 

Schoen assembled a solid mix of veterans acquired via free agency (Chaunce Gholston, Roy Robertson-Harris, Jeremiah Ledbetter) and the draft (Darius Alexander) to create a much deeper defensive front that has a better ability to shore up the run defense, which was a major problem for the team last year.

Throw in the addition of rookie Abdul Carter and the return of veterans KAyvon Thibodeaux and Brian Burns, and this Giants defensive front is so promising that it ranked third in Pro Football Focus’s ranking of defensive fronts, falling just behind the Steelers (first) and Eagles (second).

“Arguably, no team has done more in the NFL to strengthen its defensive line and pass rush over the past couple of seasons than the Giants,” PFF’s Zoltan Buday wrote. 

“The team's edge defender trio is complemented by perhaps the best nose tackle in the league, Dexter Lawrence. Although Lawrence’s 2024 season was cut short due to an injury, his 89.9 PFF overall grade still ranked third among interior defenders.”

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Did Giants close the gap with the Eagles in this area?

A big takeaway in this ranking, assuming you agree with it, is that the Giants have seemingly closed the gap with the Eagles as far as the defensive front’s talent is concerned. 

Giants fans are well aware that the Eagles have had Big Blue’s number for years, and with the Giants looking to close the talent gap between themselves and their divisional opponents, this could prove to be a good start, given how defenses keep teams in games.

The Giants' defensive front last year finished 18th in the league with a 21.8% pressure rate, which was better than the Eagles', who finished 28th with a 17.9% pressure rate.

But a deeper dive into the advanced metrics shows that the Eagles were far better than the Giants against the run, the Giants finishing with the sixth-worst run defense (2,316 rushing yards allowed and 18 rushing touchdowns). 

Meanwhile, the Eagles had the tenth-best run defense (1,771 rushing yards, nine rushing touchdowns allowed).

Fielding a better run defense should help the Giants defense in keeping opponents in second- and third-and-long situations, setting up for the pass rush to finish things off.  

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