With the NY Giants’ offense struggling halfway through the season, the clock is ticking for the proper adjustments to be made before it’s too late.
It’s no secret that the NY Giants’ offense has struggled mightily, particularly since Jason Garrett took over as the offensive coordinator at the start of the 2020 season.
This season, the Giants‘ offense ranks 24th in the NFL in points per game, averaging just 19.5, only a slight uptick from 2020 when the 17.5 points per game, good for 31st in the NFL.
There are several contributing factors as to why the offense has scored under 20 points in half its games this year, and over 30 points in just one game since the beginning of 2020.
Likewise, there are plenty of ways the NY Giants can spark the offense over the second half of the season.
How the NY Giants can turn things around on offense the rest of this season:
Make a Coaching Change
After Daniel Jones was drafted 6th overall in the 2019 draft, the Giants offense managed to average 21.3 points per game in his rookie season, 18th in the NFL, despite a porous offensive line and a myriad of turnovers. This is all with 5th-round rookie wide receiver Darius Slayton and 31-year-old Golden Tate leading the way in receiving yards. Not to mention Sterling Shepard and Evan Engram missing six and eight games, respectively.
Given all of that, the Giants finished 4-12 and owner John Mara made an executive decision to fire head coach and offensive play-caller Pat Shurmur after just two seasons. With his departure, the Giants hired Joe Judge as the new head coach, as he elected to add Jason Garrett to the staff to be his offensive coordinator.
As aforementioned, the offense took a major step backward.
Following Jones’ first two seasons, the number one criticism was that he committed too many turnovers to lead a successful offense in the NFL. In his rookie year, he had 23 turnovers in 13 games. In his second season, he had 16 turnovers in 14 games; an improvement, but still an issue.
However, Jones has had just seven turnovers in eight games this year. If you remove the week 6 matchup against the Rams, a disastrous game for everyone involved in the organization, he’s had only three turnovers in the other seven contests.
Despite Jones improving upon his biggest flaw each season, it hasn’t translated to points, which leaves Jason Garrett as the man under the microscope, as it’s his schemes and his play-calling that can be argued as what has handcuffed the offense’s ability to produce.
This is the same Garrett who was calling plays for the Cowboys up until 2019, and upon giving up the play-calling responsibility to Kellen Moore, the offense jumped from league average from 2017-18, to a top-2 offense in the NFL in 2019. If the Giants want to make a change in its offensive philosophy, it starts with Garrett being relieved of his duties.