New York Giants

The New York Giants finished 2025 at four and thirteen, dead last in the NFC East, missing the playoffs for the third straight year and becoming the first NFL team to be first eliminated from postseason contention in back-to-back seasons since Houston in 2021 and 2022. This year got muffed every way a year can get muffed — seven one-possession losses, five blown double-digit leads, head coach Brian Daboll fired midseason after that Week 10 collapse in Chicago, and season-ending injuries to Malik Nabers and rookie running back Cam Skattebo that gutted the skill group. And yet the one thing that went right was the biggest thing — rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart took over in Week 4 and gave this franchise the first real hope at quarterback it's had in years. The arc was ugly losses bookended by two bright spots: a Week 6 beatdown of the Philadelphia Eagles where the Giants hung thirty-four, and a thirty-four to seventeen Week 18 win over Dallas to close the year. A transition season disguised as a lost one.

Here's the team by the numbers. The Giants scored roughly twenty-one points a game and surrendered about twenty-five, and underneath that, both sides pointed the same direction. Through the air, total expected points added — the stat measuring how much each pass play moved the scoreboard — was minus four point six, league-average-bad, while the ground game added plus seventeen point nine, a genuine positive. On defense, the pass unit allowed plus sixteen point four expected points and the run defense allowed plus seventy-three point eight — and remember, on defense you want those negative, so plus seventy-four against the run is a flashing red light. Third down was a coin flip both ways, forty-one percent on offense and forty percent allowed, and the turnover math was brutal: sixteen giveaways against fifteen takeaways. This was boom-or-bust football — the Giants scored thirty-four three times and got held to single digits by Washington in Week 1, with five games decided by four points or fewer going the wrong way.

Now let's talk about the passing offense. Two hundred and seventeen passing yards a game, twenty-one touchdowns, sixteen turnovers, and forty-eight sacks allowed — that sack number jumps off the page, nearly three a game, and it's the headline for why total passing expected points added landed at minus four point six. The pocket was a problem all year, but the arrow pointed up once Dart took the reins in Week 4. Dart finished with two thousand, two hundred and seventy-two passing yards, fifteen touchdowns, just five interceptions, and a plus three point four passing expected points added over fourteen rookie games — and his signature throw came in Week 7 in Denver, third and seventeen in the fourth quarter, when he ripped a short middle ball to Theo Johnson who took it forty-one yards to the house, a play worth a staggering plus six expected points. The passing game was boom-or-bust — thirty-four-point outbursts against the Eagles and Cowboys, a six-point no-show in the Week 1 opener at Washington. The raw numbers say average; the trajectory with Dart says foundation.

Now let's dig into the rushing offense. This was the strength of the team: one hundred and twenty-nine point six rushing yards a game, twenty-two rushing touchdowns, plus seventeen point nine expected points added on the ground, and a positive per-carry number at plus zero point zero four — the Giants ran the ball respectably and converted in the red zone all year. Dart himself was the engine, running for four hundred and eighty-seven yards and nine rushing touchdowns on just eighty-six carries, a plus thirty-eight point one rushing expected points added season that is elite for a quarterback. The ground game was the steady floor on this roster — it showed up every single week, and in the Week 18 finale against Dallas, it helped put a bow on a thirty-four to seventeen win that let this team walk off standing up.

Next up, the pass defense. The Giants allowed two hundred and twenty-nine point nine passing yards a game, twenty-five touchdowns through the air, and generated just thirty-nine sacks and fifteen total takeaways across seventeen games — and the passing expected points added allowed was plus sixteen point four, a losing number when you want it deep in the negative. The pass rush story stings most: Dexter Lawrence played all seventeen games and finished with just a half-sack, by far the worst mark of his career, and without his interior push the whole operation sputtered. This unit was boom-or-bust in the worst way: forced four takeaways in the Week 6 rout of the Eagles, then went multiple weeks barely generating a single splash play. A defense that takes the ball away just fifteen times in a full season is going to lose close games, and the Giants lost seven one-score games.

And the run defense. This was the worst unit on the team, full stop — one hundred and forty-six point eight rushing yards a game allowed, twenty-one rushing touchdowns, and plus seventy-three point eight rushing expected points added allowed, which on defense you want negative, so plus seventy-four is catastrophic, one of the worst marks in football. The per-carry number allowed was plus zero point one seven, meaning every handoff against this defense was a positive play on average. A steady problem, not a spike — gashed by the Cowboys in Week 2, gashed by the Eagles in Week 8, gashed by the Lions in Week 12 when the Giants blew a twenty-seven to seventeen fourth-quarter lead in overtime. Fixing the front is the single biggest job of the offseason, and it is not close.