The New York Giants, like most NFL teams, are still waiting for some their high draft picks from recent years to reach their full potential. If you peruse the Giants’ roster, you can pretty much figure out who those players are.
The first one that comes to mind, tight end Evan Engram, a former first round pick who is entering his fourth season. Engram has shown flashes of greatness but injuries, a case of the drops and inconsistent usage have bogged hm down.
Our colleague over at CBS Sports Dan Schneier believes that Engram could break out under new offensive coordinator Jason Garrett this year.
Garrett’s offense has been described as tight end-friendly and the numbers support this. This is great news for Engram. Specifically, tight ends in Garrett’s offense are asked to do a little bit more in the vertical passing game up the seams. This is a key aspect of Engram’s game that has oddly been underutilized during the first three seasons of his career with multiple coordinators. At the 2017 combine, Engram ran a 4.42 40-yard dash at 234 pounds. He also had a 36-inch vertical jump. More importantly, Engram hit on several long touchdowns up the seam during his career at Ole Miss.
Another player Schneier identifies for a break out is left guard Will Hernandez, who was a second round pick in 2018. As a rookie, Hernandez was ranked the seventh-best left guard in football. A regression in 2019 has many hopeful that Garrett and the new offensive line coach Marc Columbo can get Hernandez back on the right track.
Hernandez finished No. 28 overall and it gets worse when you factor in guards who played approximately 50% of their team’s snaps. And per my own evaluation of the All-22 coaches film of every snap Hernandez has played with the Giants, the regression was real. The question becomes why did Hernandez regress and is it a sign of things to come or just a blip in the career of an impressive young lineman.
The massive regression of left tackle Nate Solder (who he plays alongside) may have played a factor, but ultimately, I think the biggest factor is that Hernandez has been blocking in a scheme that doesn’t fit his skill set. If you look back over his first two seasons with the Giants, Hernandez’s best snaps came when Shurmur (very rarely) called for a power or gap-blocking run play. When the Giants pulled Hernandez, he made defenders in space pay for it and opened up big holes for Saquon Barkley more times than not. The good news is that the Giants are expected to shift their blocking scheme and utilize more power and gap plays under Garrett and offensive line coach Marc Colombo.
The third player Schneier believes could break out is cornerback DeAndre Baker, a first round pick in 2019. Baker looked lost early on last season and now faces major legal troubles, so we’ll play along for the moment.
When evaluating his 2019 play as a whole, the majority of Baker’s struggles seem to tie back to the mental side of things. Based on what you see on the All-22, Baker actually did a better job of staying in phase in coverage (essentially stay in the hip pocket of a receiver while in coverage) than any cornerback on the roster aside from Janoris Jenkins — and at times even better than Jackrabbit. However, far too many times was Baker lost in coverage concepts that were likely foreign to him (and yes, he deserves some of the blame for not picking them up in time).
To be fair to Baker, former defensive coordinator James Bettcher utilized one of the more complicated defensive systems in the NFL — specifically in pass coverage. He often tasked his defensive backs with pattern match coverage concepts that would have likely worked a lot better with an experienced secondary (like he had in Arizona before joining the Giants). In 2020, Graham is expected to bring in a more defensive back-friendly system. Based on that, Baker’s two years of dominance at the SEC level, and the real strides he made during the stretch run of the 2019 season, I expect a major step forward in 2020.
Even if Baker is exonerated, he’s not home free. The league can still choose to suspend him based on the personal conduct policy parameters.
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