Well, that was brutal yet again for the New York Giants, who dropped their Week 15 matchup at home against the Washington Commanders. Big Blue has now lost eight straight games and fallen to 2-12 on the season, currently occupying the first overall pick in next year’s NFL Draft.
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Despite another frustrating season for the G-Men, many fans are looking forward to the offseason. You have to look at the positives week by week. One of the encouraging things about the Giants this year has been their rookies' performance, and with another top prospect potentially joining the team next year, the future is bright in East Rutherford.
One of the main storylines of the 2025 campaign has been the emergence of rookies Jaxson Dart and Cam Skattebo before his season-ending injury. However, many wondered when former first-round pick Abdul Carter would break out, and that finally happened last week. He may have just proved in one game why moving on from former defensive coordinator Shane Bowen was the right decision.
Abdul Carter's Week 15 performance is a terrible look for Shane Bowen
We all knew what the former Penn State edge rusher was capable of after watching his ascending collegiate career in Happy Valley, but many Big Blue fans were waiting for it to translate to the NFL with the Giants.
The G-Men drafted Carter in last year’s draft with the third overall pick. Many experts were picking him as the early favorite to win the DROY award and even compared him to Green Bay Packers edge rusher and fellow Nittany Lion Micah Parsons.
Although Carter was a highly touted prospect coming out of Penn State, the 22-year-old had a frustrating rookie campaign on and off the field until the last game. Carter has been in the news lately and not for the right reasons.
He has recently been showing up late to meetings and sleeping through walkthroughs, and was even suspended twice by interim head coach Mike Kafka, which led to the rookie being benched for the Giants’ first defensive series.
On the field, Carter has been really quiet as his first career full sack didn’t come until the Giants’ Week 13 matchup against the New England Patriots, which also happened to be the first game New York played since firing Bowen.
Carter had 12 sacks last year at Penn State, just to put that into perspective.
Last week against the Commanders, Carter showed up again, but this time with an even better performance than the previous week. The rookie had a sack-fumble, seven total tackles, three tackles for loss, including a forced fumble and recovery.
It seems like Kafka and interim defensive coordinator Charlie Bullen are finally getting the message through to Carter because in the last two weeks alone, he’s looked more like the third overall pick than he has the rest of this season, which Brian Daboll and Bowen clearly failed to accomplish.