Big Blue View
A look at what Big Blue offers fantasy football managers this season
August is here at last, and the NFL preseason has kicked off! If you haven’t started prepping for your drafts in season-long redraft fantasy leagues, it’s time to get going. You can check out all of my preliminary preseason rankings and tiers, and other draft prep articles, at this link. I’ll have a lot more content for you as the month rolls along.
Big Blue View covers all things NY Giants. So today I’m going to focus on one team and one team only. That’s right, it’s time for my annual New York Football Giants fantasy preview!
Let’s start with a little game. See if you can guess what these numbers represent: 31, 31, 15, 30, 31. Give up? That’s the Giants’ ranking in points scored since 2020. Their ranking in total offense are similar for those five seasons, and last season the Giants were one of only four teams to average less than 300 yards of offense per game. Ugh.
Big Blue has featured one of the NFL’s most anemic offenses for half a decade, and while that prolonged malaise hasn’t completely doomed the Giants’ players from a fantasy perspective, it hasn’t helped. The Giants have been an offense to (mostly) avoid for fantasy for most of the 2020s. They head into this season with the same Head Coach and Offensive Coordinator as last year, and are projected to have as many as 10 returning starters on offense. The one notable change is at quarterback, plus some offensive line re-shuffling. Will it make a difference? Let’s take a look.
The big bright spot last season was sensational rookie receiver Malik Nabers, who quickly established himself as a high-end option at his position, and gives the team a true playmaker to build around. But he and the rest of the offense were plagued by inconsistent play from the offensive line and more importantly, sub-par performance from several different starters at the quarterback position. The QB room has been overhauled almost entirely and now features veterans Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston, and rookie Jaxson Dart. It’s an upgrade overall, but will it be enough to tip the scales for the entire offense? We’ll see soon enough.
I’ll go position-by-position for today’s exercise. All rankings shown are for Half-Point PPR, are on a Fantasy Points Per Game (FPPG) basis, and exclude the final week of the season. Preseason draft rankings represent Expert Consensus Rankings (ECR) as of August 3.
Quarterback
Wilson is expected to open the season as the starter, but at some point he’s likely to give way to the rookie Dart. Wilson has been a steady mid-range fantasy QB2 for the last few seasons and his veteran presence should provide some professionalism and stability, but not a ton of upside. Winston would bring more upside, but with it more volatility. A full season of him under center could mean 130 catches, 1,700 yards, and double-digit TDs for Nabers....
