It’s never wise to take too much from preseason games. Offenses generally aren’t showing their cards. Defenses tend to be vanilla. Starters don’t play much, if at all.
That warning aside, the Giants’ second preseason game showed just how different they’ll be on offense this year now that they’ve added a couple of players with skillsets that were nowhere to be found on the roster a year ago.
Darren Waller and Jalin Hyatt
In tight end Darren Waller, the Giants have a player who is a mismatch just by standing on the field. There aren’t too many defenders who can match up to his size (6’6”) and athleticism.
When the trade for Waller happened back in March, I put together a breakdown of the different ways that the Giants will be able to use him to define the coverage, create advantageous 1-on-1’s, and make Daniel Jones’ life easier in general.
This 2nd-and-3 against the Panthers during Week 2 of the preseason serves as our first glimpse of how he’ll do that in a Giants uniform. As you can see, New York was in a 3x1 (or 1x3) formation with Waller iso’d to the back side: