The New York Giants have some serious work to do heading into 2026—and it’s not just about winning more games. It’s about being smarter, sharper, and more efficient on both sides of the ball.
If you watched the Giants in 2025, you probably felt the same way I did: this team looked better than the one that stumbled to a 3-14 record in 2024. In fact, they looked better than any Giants squad from the past three years. The numbers back that up—at least partly. Their point differential in 2025 was -58. That’s not great, but it’s a huge improvement over the -141 in 2023 and -142 in 2024. Yet, for all that progress, they won just one more game than the 2024 team and two fewer than the 2023 squad. As the saying goes, you are what your record says you are.
It’s tempting to pin the Giants’ 4-13 finish on those heartbreaking fourth-quarter defensive collapses. And sure, those late-game meltdowns were a big part of the story. But when you zoom out and look at the season as a whole, there are deeper issues that need fixing if 2026 is going to be the turning point fans are hoping for. Moving the ball effectively and making life difficult for opponents is obviously priority number one. But in the end, football comes down to one simple equation: scoring points and preventing them. And those two things aren’t always the same.
To get a clearer picture, let’s look at how every NFL team performed in 2025. We’ve plotted yards gained against points scored, and yards allowed against points allowed. The trend line on each graph represents what an average NFL team would be expected to produce based on their yardage.
On the offensive side, teams to the right of the line are efficient—they’re scoring more than expected given their yardage. Teams to the left are inefficient, leaving points on the field. Defensively, it’s the opposite: teams to the left are stingy, giving up fewer points than expected, while those to the right are giving up too many.
Take the Los Angeles Rams, for example. Their scoring was right in line with what you’d expect from a team that led the league in yards gained. They simply executed. That’s the kind of efficiency the Giants need to chase—not just moving the ball, but finishing drives and making every possession count.
If the Giants want to turn that 4-13 record into something special in 2026, they need to stop being a team that looks better on the field than on the scoreboard. It’s time to be better—and more efficient.