NY Giants’ defense has been a disaster: How did it get this bad?

The New York Giants’ defense, led by a front seven many thought would be among the best in the league, was supposed to be the strength of the team in 2025. Many believed that with the assembled talent, the Giants should be a top 10 defense.

Things have, as every Giants fan knows, gone horribly wrong.

• The Giants keep blowing fourth-quarter leads, sometimes in historic fashion.
• They give up 27.3 points per game, 29th in the NFL.
• They are last in the league in run defense, giving up 5.5 yards per attempt.
• The Giants are tied with the Bears for last in the NFL in yards before contact allowed per rushing attempt at 1.9.
• The Giants are 29th in the league in defensive Expected Points Added (EPA) per play at -0.11.
• The Giants are tied for second-last in the NFL in takeaways with just six. No defensive back seems capable of playing a ball in the air, and no pass rusher seems able to dislodge the quarterback from the ball.
• Brian Burns is having a career year, and Cor’Dale Flott has been a surprise. Otherwise, the defense is filled with players underperforming expectations.

Why? Why have things been this disastrous?

It is easy to point the finger at defensive coordinator Shane Bowen and say, “his fault.” His schemes are too soft. The players don’t listen. They don’t learn. Mistakes never get fixed. Maybe all of that is true, at least in part.

If you believe Bowen should have been fired after last season when co-owner John Mara publicly gave ex-coach Brian Daboll opening to do that … or after the Week 2 meltdown against the Dallas Cowboys … or the Week 7 Denver Debacle .. or after the Giants gave up 34 points to a San Francisco 49ers team quarterbacked by Mac Jones … or any other time, I am not going to argue.

Maybe, for better or worse, Daboll would still have a job if he had taken any of those well-marked off ramps to move on from Bowen.

Still, not everything that has gone wrong with the defense is a Bowen problem, or an issue caused by the defensive coordinator.

Here is a list of eight questions that have contributed to the defense under-performing its perceived talent level. I don’t have the answers to any of them. The purpose here is to simply raise the questions, lay out some of the possible causes or explanations, and let you see where you stand on all of them.

Let’s dive in.

Why has Dexter Lawrence played below standard?

In the annual NFL Top 100 survey, players voted Lawrence the 17th-best player in the league entering the season. The only interior defensive lineman ranked higher was Chris Jones of the Kansas City Chiefs, and there are plenty of analysts who had Lawrence rated as the better player.

Stunningly, after three straight dominant seasons in which he totaled 21.0 sacks, made the Pro Bowl...