Big Blue View
If I told you a month ago the New York Giants were going to win one of their first four games this season, I doubt many of you would have picked Game 4 against the Los Angeles Chargers. Yet, that’s what happened. It wasn’t a perfect performance by the Giants, but what it was, was a day when the Giants came up big with the game on the line, something that has been rare since 2023. Let’s see what the analysts at Pro Football Focus thought about individual player performances, along with who played and how much.
I had a request to show the entire offense’s grades when I write these pieces, so I’ll leave those here without comment, other than to point out that PFF didn’t think anyone on the offense played much better than average, and many played worse. We’ll discuss why in the individual position sections.
Let’s start at quarterback, where I’m sure many of you will be saying unprintable things about PFF’s view of Jaxson Dart’s performance (it’s going to be years before I stop typing “ck” instinctively instead of “x”):
Here is why it is important to understand what PFF grades are and are not. PFF grades are not about intangibles. They do not try to measure leadership, toughness, etc. They just try to assess specific plays: How well the quarterback threw the ball, how many difficult but accurate throws he made, how often he put the ball up for grabs where it could have been intercepted, etc. You can see that when Dart was kept clean, he passed reasonably well though not spectacularly (69.4, only 111 passing yards, 1 TD on a shovel pass), i.e., he didn’t make any wow passes, but neither did he almost get intercepted. Those passes were mostly short (5.9 ADOT), as we can see from his spray chart for the game:
Most of his passes were about 10 yards or less, he didn’t complete any beyond 20 yards, and he didn’t even use the middle or left parts of the field beyond 15 yards. Dart did however get an elite 89.4 rushing grade when kept clean, which mostly accounts for his 83.3 overall grade. He made no turnover-worthy plays, but neither did he have any big-time throws.
Under pressure was a different story. Dart was pressured 35.7% of the time according to PFF (32.1% according to NextGenStats). On 10 such dropbacks, he only passed 4 times, completing none of them. His time to throw under pressure was a whopping 4.17 s. Also, unlike most experienced QBs who are comfortable dealing with the blitz, Dart’s grade was noticeably lower when blitzed, and three of his five sacks came on plays he was blitzed, though his one TD shovel pass was against a blitz.
Pass blocking is sorted by pass block snaps to highlight the offensive line. Andrew Thomas (86.0), in his first full game, gave up no pressures, which is great news. Jon Runyan Jr....
