In the first year under the current regime of general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll, the New York Giants surprised many by going to the postseason and winning a game in the wild-card round.
Ever since then, it’s been downhill for the Giants. And despite a three-win season in Year 3 while the team was celebrating its 100th season, the current regime was retained early this offseason.
Now, ahead of the 2025 season with an upgrade at the quarterback position, the Giants are facing one of the hardest schedules in the league. In fact, the Giants’ over/under win total is set at 5.5.
Former Giants offensive lineman Geoff Schwartz doesn’t believe they’ll hit the over.
The New York Giants have three ingredients that I often view as reasons why teams go Over their win total. The first, as mentioned above, is injury regression to the mean.
The second is the result of one-score games. The Giants were 1-8 in those games last season, and the following season that tends to reverse. It’s unlikely a team is 8-1 in one-score games, but they shift from 1-8 to somewhere around 4-5 or 5-4. That’s a huge difference in the overall result of a season.
The third factor is a quarterback upgrade. I’m not high on Russell Wilson in general, but he is still better than the Giants’ quarterback situation from last season.
So, the Giants meet most of the criteria I’d use for picking a team to go Over their win total.
However, they have one of the toughest schedules in the NFL, and I’m unsure they’ll come out of October with more than a single win. In fact, they’d be fortunate to be favored in more than one game this season.
Here’s the first two months of their season: They open at Washington and Dallas, then host the Chiefs and Chargers. After that, a trip to New Orleans, followed by two games against the Eagles, with the Broncos sandwiched in between. They start November with the 49ers, then face the Bears, Packers and Lions — oh my! They’ll be an underdog in every game, and possibly a pick in New Orleans.
So that poor record in close games may not even matter this season, as they could find themselves down by double digits late in games. When they start slow, the coaching staff may quickly turn to Jaxson Dart, who isn’t ready to be a starter yet. New York’s season is going to spiral out of control quickly. So I’m going with the Giants Under 5.5 wins.
PICK: New York Giants Under 5.5 wins
Schwartz played two seasons with the Giants in 2014 and 2015. His prediction is a fair one considering their difficult schedule and their offense being a work in progress.
If Russell Wilson plays at an elite level, the Giants’ offensive line plays the way they did the first few games of last season (before left tackle Andrew Thomas got hurt), and they have a top-10 defense, things can change in a hurry. However, there are a lot of things that need to fall right for the Giants if they are going to have a successful season.
This article originally appeared on Giants Wire: Ex-Giant predicts more pain for Big Blue in 2025
