In 11 personnel, there is no team faster than the Giants

After years of work, the New York Giants now have one of the fastest teams in the NFL and the fastest 11 personnel in the league.

The NFL has always been about power and speed, but in recent years, a greater emphasis has been put on the latter as teams play more wide-open football than ever before.

The New York Giants have traditionally relied more heavily on the power side of things, but they’ve run the risk of being left behind. For that reason, general manager Dave Gettleman has worked hard to increase the overall team speed in recent years.

In fact, the Giants focused very heavily on players who were fleet of foot in the 2020 NFL Draft, capping off what has been a substantial three-year rebuild.

“The theme of the day for defense was speed,” Gettleman told reporters following the 2020 NFL Draft. “We really feel like we improved our team’s speed and that was what we were trying to do.”

“Dave hit this off the bat, the theme of the day was speed,” coach Joe Judge added at the time.

With the 2020 draft class entered into the fray, the Giants didn’t just improve their overall team speed, they became one of the fastest teams in the NFL. And if you were to drill into it even further, they are now the fastest team in the NFL when in 11 personnel.

The data was shared by NFL Network analyst Daniel Jeremiah.

For the Giants, 11 personnel would feature running back Saquon Barkley (4.41), tight end Evan Engram (4.42), and wide receivers Sterling Shepard (4.48), Golden Tate (4.42) and Darius Slayton (4.39).

Yeah, that’s speedy.

But beyond just their 11 personnel, the Giants have upgraded their team speed across the board, specifically on defense where it was really lacking, adding players like cornerbacks Darnay Holmes (4.48), Corey Ballentine (4.47) and James Bradberry (4.49) over the previous two seasons.

The Giants have also added speed elsewhere. Special teams ace Nate Ebner (4.48), and wide receivers Cody Core (4.47) and Corey Coleman (4.37) will each factor in at some point in 2020.

Although they still lack speed at the linebacker position outside of Lorenzo Carter (4.46), the Giants are clearly a much faster team than they were just three years ago and that should help them substantially as they continue working to right the ship.

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