The New York Giants watched the majority of their 2022 rookie draft class go down due to injury. Half of their class suffered ACL tears on the MetLife turf and several others sustained different injuries that limited their quality during the regular season. However, 2023 will essentially be their rookie year, but the Giants are still high on Cincinnati linebacker, Darrian Beavers.
Beavers is an exciting player that has a ton of instinctual potential, standing at 6-foot-3 and 242 pounds. The sixth-round pick was impressive during spring training and team drills in 2022, indicating he was in line to potentially start games during the 2023 season, just as Micah McFadden did.
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The Giants still have some very solid potential in Darrian Beavers:
Beavers spent five years at Cincinnati, playing in 14 games during his senior campaign in 2021. He logged a career-high 98 total tackles with 4.0 sacks, an interception, and two forced fumbles. Beavers isn’t known for his extraordinary athleticism but he is a high-IQ player that finds himself in the right spot and presents a good tackler.
“I think he’s an instinctive player,” Giants coach Brian Daboll said last year. “He’s got good size and length. There were some really good plays he had and some plays that we need to correct and teach from so that next time we’re a little bit better at them. But he’s a young man that loves football, that has good intelligence, that’s tough, that’s dependable. He’s a good young player to work with.”
Beavers clearly fits the cultural element the Giants have constructed over the last year. Having signed Bobby Okereke to man a starting linebacker spot, the LB2 position is up for grabs.
The Giants have several competitors eyeing that slot, and Beavers is certainly in the mix coming off an ACL tear. Depending on how far along he is in his rehabilitation, it’ll be interesting to see how involved Beavers gets during training camp, but the lack of talent at the position certainly opens up an opportunity for him to snag a starting spot.