The defense has been the strength of the NY Giants this season. Isaac Yiadom has contributed to its success in each of his three starts.
The New York Giants continue to tally up losses. But as they showed a national audience on Monday Night Football, their defense has the ability to keep them within every game. Offseason moves for talented players like Isaac Yiadom are a key reason why.
Yiadom was traded to the Giants this year from the Denver Broncos for a seventh round draft pick. In his third start for Big Blue, he played a great game against Tom Brady, just one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. His game on Monday night was perhaps the best of the three.
Yiadom played every defensive snap for the first time this season. His previous high came in week three against the San Francisco 49ers, in which he played 75% of the defensive snaps. That game, though, he played no special teams snaps, the only game this season in which he hasn’t. Against the Bucs, he played 11% of the special teams snaps.
That week three game was a strong outing for the third-year pro from Boston College. He racked up eight tackles, which was third on the team. He also logged a pass deflection. Fast forward to week eight, and he put up the exact same numbers: eight tackles and a pass deflection, and he was third in tackles overall.
His consistency comes through on the stat sheet for the year. Despite being the backup right corner back on the Giants depth chart — and despite only starting three games, and only playing more than half of the snaps in three of the four games he played defense — Yiadom is 10th on the team overall for tackles. He is 5th among players in the secondary.
Isaac Yiadom isn’t only collecting tackles. In an otherwise quiet game against the Los Angeles Rams, a game in which he only played 26% of the defensive snaps, he logged two tackles, but managed to force a fumble.
Yiadom was drafted by the Broncos in the third round in 2018. In 2019 he started eight games for the team, but struggled to maintain his spot on the 10th-best ranked defense that year.
But in the limited action he’s shown the Giants, he’s been well worth the trade.
In fact, Yiadom could prove to be an absolute steal. He’s under contract this year for $750,000, and is slated to make $920,000 next year before becoming an unrestricted free agent.
Though the Giants are in rebuild mode, their defense seems to have a good foundation. It’s better to lock up promising talent like Yiadom while they can to keep this group together.