The New York Giants are a trendy pick to be a lot better in 2026 than they were in 2025. Everybody liked the hiring of John Harbaugh to replace the departed Brian Daboll. Everybody agrees that they had a strong first round of the draft by taking Arvell Reese and Francis Mauigoa in the top 10. There are high hopes for the defense under Dennard Wilson despite the departure of Dexter Lawrence. And the offense has Jaxson Dart heading into Year 2 after a pretty successful rookie campaign.
The recent reporting surrounding the health status of Dart’s No. 1 receiver, though, is concerning. Malik Nabers tore his ACL last year and missed the final 13 games of the season, but as Harbaugh reported this week, the injury was not a “simple” one, and Nabers has required multiple surgeries. The Giants don’t seem to have a firm timeline on when he’ll be able to return to the field.
“He’s in the middle of it. It’s such a hard thing. It’s an ACL, and whatever else he had in that knee,” Harbaugh reported, via ESPN. “Not a simple knee [injury], you know? So, um, he’s in the slog of it, the grind of it, I would say. So, he’s fighting through it, and he’s here every day working hard at it. Just impossible to predict. I mean, the goal is to start the season and get out there sometime in training camp. That’d be the goal, and we’ll see what happens.”
Malik Nabers
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The murky return timeline of the team’s top target clouds what otherwise looks like a solid environment for Dart to have success in his second NFL season — even if you don’t love the idea of Matt Nagy as the team’s offensive coordinator. (Which you probably shouldn’t, given his recent track record.)
The offense has enough pieces to support Dart
The Giants have what should be a decent to good offensive line in 2026, for example. Andrew Thomas, when healthy, is one of the best tackles in all of football. Jermaine Eluemunor has solidified things on the opposite side of the line. Thomas finished third among tackles in Pro Football Focus’ pass-blocking grades last year and allowed just 13 pressures on 415 pass-blocking snaps. Eluemunor finished 20th on the same list and allowed only 19 pressures on 585 snaps. They’re both strong in the run game as well, though Thomas more so than Eluemunor.
Mauigoa was considered arguably the top offensive lineman in this draft class (he was taken as the second lineman off the board after Spencer Fano) and will kick inside to guard after spending his career at Miami as a tackle. He’s replacing Greg Van Roten, who was one part of the comparatively weaker interior line trio last season. John Michael Schmitz and Jon Runyan are still at the other two spots and are solid, if unspectacular starters (or at least Schmitz is), but when they’re looking like your two weakest links, that’s a pretty good position to be in.
As a group, the Giants should be able to do well in pass protection so long as Runyan and Schmitz hold up. And in the run game, they should at the very least be better than they were last season, because Mauigoa is coming in to kick some ass on the right side of the line. If Thomas stays healthier than he did over the last few years, when he missed 22 of 51 possible games (including four last year), then they could be better than that.
On paper, the skill-position unit looks pretty good as well. Nabers has shown that he has the ability to be a true No. 1 receiver. Isaiah Likely has shown really strong flashes in a limited role in Baltimore. There’s some depth at receiver in Darius Slayton, Darnell Mooney, Calvin Austin III and third-round pick Malachi Fields. When he wasn’t dropping passes, Theo Johnson put together a decent season for a young tight end last year.
And in the backfield, there’s the combination of Cam Skattebo and Tyrone Tracy Jr., along with Devin Singletary to handle some third-down stuff on occasion. That’s not bad.
But if Nabers’ injury keeps him out for some of the season or limits him when he’s on the field, things look less promising.
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The optimism fades quickly if Nabers and Skattebo aren’t healthy
None of the other wide receivers are significant threats on the outside or in the slot. We’ve seen what it looks like when Slayton is one of the top targets for a team’s offense, and it’s not pretty. Mooney has basically had two worthwhile seasons in six years in the NFL. One of those came with Nagy as the play-caller, but that was also five years ago, and Mooney was 24 then, not 29.
Austin has never topped 36 catches or 548 yards in his career and struggled to get on the field consistently despite a barren wide receiver depth chart in Pittsburgh. Fields is a big body at 6-foot-4 and 222 pounds, a good blocker and physical at the catch point, but he’s probably not the kind of guy who’s going to consistently create separation or be a lead receiver in a unit if Nabers has to miss time.
Likely has been a part-time player for his entire career and has never topped 60 targets, 42 catches or 477 yards. Tight ends do sometimes tend to bloom during their second contracts, and Likely has the talent to be a top option, but it wouldn’t necessarily be surprising if he took a small step forward instead of a large one. There’s no guarantee he’ll play more than the 75% snap rate that top tight ends usually hit, for example, with Johnson still around and another blocking tight end behind them in Chris Manhertz.
Then there’s the backfield. Skattebo had a solid rookie season, but it’s easy to forget that he only averaged 4.1 yards per carry. He’s now coming off a broken fibula, a dislocated ankle and a torn deltoid ligament. That is … not ideal. We’ve seen over the last several years that players coming off the broken fibula specifically have taken a while to get back to full strength, and throwing the dislocated ankle in there makes it even worse.
Skattebo has reported he’ll be back for Week 1, but we don’t yet have confirmation on that, either. If the backfield is just Tracy and Singletary for a while, or if Skattebo can’t just maintain his efficiency from last year but improve on it, that backfield suddenly doesn’t look quite as strong.
Dart may have to overcome the situation himself
Jaxson Dart
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All of this, obviously, is just conjecture. It’s entirely possible that Nabers is fully healthy and back to being a No. 1 receiver despite coming off the torn ACL. It’s entirely possible that Skattebo overcomes the odds and is actually better than he was as a rookie.
It’s entirely possible that Slayton re-emerges as a deep threat; that Nagy taps into whatever chemistry he had with Mooney; that Likely takes a significant step forward; that Johnson plays a key supplemental role; that Fields becomes a contested-catch threat as a rookie — or that any combination of those things happens and there’s enough for Dart to work with that it doesn’t matter if one thing or another doesn’t come through.
It’s also possible that Dart just develops enough that he elevates the situation himself. We’ve seen that kind of thing happen before. It usually happens in better offensive environments than one where the No. 1 receiver and No. 1 running back are coming off major injuries and where the offensive coordinator is Matt Nagy, but it’s happened before.
And Dart does have a lot of talent. It needs to be harnessed and channeled in the right ways — and he needs to stop playing recklessly enough that it looks like he’s going to get himself injured — but the talent is there.
It’s just that it may not get the chance to shine all the way through if the currently cloudy injury situations don’t clear themselves up over these next few months.
