Playing football in the NFL is hard enough. Playing blind should make it near-impossible, but New York Giants cornerback Dru Phillips apparently didn’t get the memo. The second-year slot defender had a quietly impressive rookie campaign, despite playing with contacts he hated and blurry vision he admits made tracking the ball a problem.
Phillips took care of that this offseason by getting LASIK. No more contacts. No more irritation. No more excuse for not finding the football when it’s in the air. When asked about the procedure’s impact, the 23-year-old summed it up like someone who has been waiting a long time to say it:
“I was kind of blind before, hated wearing contacts. I’m seeing the ball in the air, I’m tracking the ball a lot better, I can go attack more.”
The fact he was already playing pretty well just makes it that much more impressive. Phillips earned the starting nickel job and never gave it back. He showed real instincts, played physically, and got thrown into the fire in a defense that was anything but stable.
Related: Giants sitting on gold mine with breakout star ready to take over in 2025
Now he’s one of the young leaders in a completely reworked secondary, and it doesn’t sound like he’s backing down from anything.
Don't look now but Dru Phillips might be even better Round 2
Even with a vision issue he claims affected ball-tracking, Phillips finished with an impressive 71 tackles (46 solo), a sack, two forced fumbles, one interception, and seven tackles for loss in 14 games.
His 11 missed tackles definitely stand out, tied for third on the team with Bobby Okereke, but if Phillips truly was out there seeing fuzz, then maybe this surgery helps him clean that up.
Pro Football Focus had him finishing 13th in coverage rating (95.6) among 23 slot corners with at least 250 coverage snaps. He allowed just one touchdown from the slot and picked off a pass while holding his coverage assignment to 41 catches for 373 yards.
So yeah, the whole “kind of blind” thing holds a little more weight now.
PFF called Phillips the Giants’ most underrated player heading into 2025. His overall grade (77.5) was top-10 at the position. He was one of only three corners in the league to rank top-25 in both coverage grade and run-defense grade while primarily playing in the slot.
If this is what he did as a self-proclaimed semi-blind rookie, it’s not hard to see why expectations are different now. The G-Men added Paulson Adebo and Jevon Holland this offseason, and will need Phillips to keep ascending if the group is going to matter in 2025. Maybe that next step was always going to happen anyway, but it probably helps that he can actually see what’s in front of him now.