One preseason game. Six snaps. Three quarterback rushes. Three quarterback pressures. In Major League Baseball, fans would call that batting a thousand (1.000). But this isn't baseball, it's football... so let's just call this what it is in football terms: absolute nightmare fuel for every team not named the New York Giants.
Abdul Carter wasted no time making his presence felt (literally) in the Giants' 34-25 preseason victory over the Buffalo Bills on Saturday. The Giants’ No. 3 overall pick was on the field for only a handful of snaps, but he squeezed every bit out of the snaps he got.
That included winning two matchups against four-time Pro Bowl left tackle Dion Dawkins, once by beating him inside to flush Mitch Trubisky into Roy Robertson-Harris, and another by bending the edge to force Trubisky up in the pocket. He even lined up at three-technique (defensive tackle) and beat right guard O’Cyrus Torrence off the snap, nearly drawing a hold in the process.
Abdul Carter's debut was short but impactful
Carter admitted after the game that he wished he’d played more, but it’s not hard to see why head coach Brian Daboll and the staff might’ve wanted to keep him fresh.
He was disruptive on every pass rush snap he got, and doing it against a veteran offensive line in your first NFL action is exactly the type of confidence boost a rookie needs.
The Giants drafted him third overall to be a game-wrecker, and his limited preseason sample did nothing to quiet that expectation. Carter’s blend of speed, leverage, and hand usage gave Dawkins issues from the jump, and his quick first step inside left Torrence looking stuck in quicksand. It’s the kind of versatility that lets defensive coordinator Shane Bowen move him anywhere and everywhere around the front and find mismatches and feast.
If this is what six snaps look like in a preseason game, it’s hard not to wonder what happens when Carter gets a full workload in a game that actually matters.
The G-Men won’t go heavy workload for a game in August, but they’ve clearly got a rookie who’s proven capable of blowing up the pocket on any given rep. And for a pass rush with all the hype in the world, this is exactly what they could have hoped for.