ESPN has sobering take on the NY Giants' 2024 season outlook

After going 6-11 in 2023, the NY Giants are looking to put themselves in a position for a major bounce back. The campaign before, Brian Daboll and Co. shocked the world by going 9-7-1, booking a trip to the postseason and taking down the Minnesota Vikings in the Wild Card Round.

That win over Minnesota feels like it was ages ago. Things fell off the tracks right away last fall, with the 40-0 loss to Dallas being more embarrassing than anyone could even know how to describe. Surely with the improvements on both sides of the ball this offseason the Giants will improve in '24, right?

Not everyone is seeing things that way. In a new piece for ESPN, writer Bill Barnwell listed the teams that he thinks are the most likely to decline. Unfortunately, the Giants are on his list, and they're joined by the Steelers, Ravens, Eagles and Browns.

ESPN thinks the Giants will take another step back this season

"I can envision a scenario in which New York improves. Jones, who was average to very good during the 2022 season, stays healthy. Evan Neal moves inside to guard, Jermaine Eluemunor takes over at tackle and the much-maligned offensive line improves in two spots. Maybe Nabers is the second coming of Odell Beckham Jr., and a young defense rides an excellent front four to adequacy. Put all that together in a division in which the top two teams took a step backward, and you could imagine a world in which the Giants put together an eight- or nine-win season. If everything goes right, the Giants will be fine. I'm just skeptical we'll see most of those things occur. As it stands, they look like a team with too many replacement-level players on their roster with a difficult-to-sustain formula for winning, built around a quarterback who hasn't often been healthy or good."

- ESPN's Bill Barnwell

So, the team's ceiling is 8-9 wins, but the floor is less than six? Way to provide us with a ton of optimism, Bill! He's not wrong, though. The Giants have added plenty of talent this offseason, including Malik Nabers, Brian Burns and Jon Runyan Jr., but there are also loads of question marks on defense.

The secondary is a major, major concern leading up to Week 1. In the joint practice vs. the Jets alone, we saw that Nick McCloud can't be trusted to be the CB2 for defensive coordinator Shane Bowen. Can we depend on Tre Hawkins to step up while Cor'Dale Flott tries to recover from an injury? Nope.

If the guys up front on defense don't live in the backfield, NY's weak secondary is going to get exposed throughout the season. Then of course, what will happen with Jones? The preseason debut for him was brutal, highlighted by the Jalen Pitre pick-six. No one knows what to expect from Danny Dimes, but Barnwell clearly isn't a huge fan. While we'd love to see Daboll and Co. turn things around, that goal might be delayed by a year or two.