The New York Giants will head into the 2020 season with a familiar young core including players such as Saquon Barkley and Daniel Jones, but when looking at the big picture, it doesn’t look like much is going to stay the same from 2019. ESPN released rankings grading each team on continuity, and the Giants are near the bottom of the list with only the Panthers coming in with more changes.
Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on perspective, but based on the poor results in recent seasons, most would agree that change is a good thing for the Giants.
The Giants are still near the beginning of their rebuild. They have a young quarterback learning a new system and a first-year head coach. This group will need time to be molded into the team Judge desires. The offense should be further along this year because of the heavy investment (three consecutive top-six picks) in recent years. The defense remains a work in progress and could take at least another offseason to develop its new identity
The Giants will return 66% of their snaps from 2019 and return neither their head coach, offensive coordinator, and defensive coordinator. Of their non-coordinator assistants, only five of them out of 14 will come back. The defense will return less players than the offense with 61% of the defensive snaps returning.
All of this, of course, means that the Giants are perhaps more unpredictable than they’ve been in other seasons recently. The team is definitely in a rebuild, but the large amount of new players may result in unexpected successes under a promising new head coach.
Of course, the Giants could also struggle as new players adapt to the system and Judge gets used to being a head coach for a rebuilding team, but at the end of the day, the major change is likely a net positive. The previous Giants rosters from recent years, after all, have failed to achieve success. Regardless of what the actual results are, this new roster at least has the potential to change that trend.