NY Giants trade for talented young cornerback
The NY Giants made a trade with the Broncos on Wednesday to improve their secondary.
If you thought that Dave Gettleman and the NY Giants were done looking to make their secondary better when they signed veteran Logan Ryan this week, you’d be wrong, as the GM went out and struck a deal with the Denver Broncos for a young, talented, but underachieving cornerback.
Isaac Yiadom is a former third-round pick out of Boston College who has started 9 games in two seasons with the Broncos, including 8 in 2019.
An unheralded prospect coming out of BC, Yiadom shined during the Senior Bowl and the NFL Combine to put himself firmly on the NFL Draft radar and ended up going much higher than most expected him to.
The NY Giants used a third-round pick on a cornerback in 2018, but it was in the supplemental draft. To say that pick (Sam Beal) hasn”t worked out would be being kind to the situation, as Beal has now left the team hamstrung (pun intended) after he shockingly opted-out of the 2020 season on the eve of the deadline earlier this summer.
This came after the Big Blue ‘D’ was already shorthanded at cornerback after DeAndre Baker’s legal debacle so it really stung.
For just a seventh-round draft pick in 2021, Dave Gettleman has managed to land a player that was taken four rounds better than that just two years ago and has two years left on his cheap rookie deal.
What does Isaac Yiadom bring to the NY Giants?
The NY Giants need a boundary cornerback to start opposite James Bradberry in the worst way and Yiadom should provide the team with a legit option in that regard. At 6’1”, Yiadom surely has the size and he ran a 4.52 at the combine which is respectable for a corner.
After an impressive rookie season that saw him limit opposing QB’s to a 57% completion percentage, Yiadom backtracked in year two when his snap count doubled from about 25% to 50% and he started half the teams games as he allowed 70% of passes thrown his way to be completed.
A major reason for that was the Broncos’ shift from a press-man scheme to zone coverage when new head coach Vic Fangio took over.
Even though he struggled, Fangio wished his former player nothing but the best and seemed very genuine in that regard. Sometimes, players just don’t fit in certain schemes, especially when they weren’t drafted by the same regime running them; that’s exactly what happened with Yiadom in Denver.
"“I don’t know if it was anything in particular, I just think it was a good opportunity, we have guys there, it was a good opportunity to give Ike a fresh start, back on the East Coast,” Broncos coach Vic Fangio said of Yiadom on Thursday. “I’ll be his biggest cheerleader. I hope he makes us look bad and he’s a great player there. I’m cheering for him. You know, it just didn’t work out here to the extent that he wanted it to, and we wanted it to, but I’m hoping the new surroundings benefit him and his career.”"
While it’s rare to ever hear a coach or executive bad mouth a player on their way out their door, that’s about as ringing of an endorsement as you’re ever going to hear from a player’s former coach.
New NY Giants defensive coordinator, Patrick Graham, loves to run press-man coverage and needs bigger cornerbacks to be able to do that effectively.
His biggest challenge will be learning the playbook in short order, but that’s one of the good thing about running press-man coverage — it’s not all the complicated.
Next. Giants wrap up training camp with final scrimmage. dark
With none of the other additions the NY Giants have made at cornerback sticking out so far, Yiadom figures to be a legitimate option to start this season for Big Blue.