The Giants spent three draft picks on offensive linemen a season ago, selecting tackle Evan Neal with the seventh overall pick before grabbing tackle Joshua Ezeudu in the third round and guard Marcus McKethan in the fifth round, but haven't seen a great return on that investment.
And amid all of the injuries to Big Blue’s O-line this season – including to 2020 first-round pick tackle Andrew Thomas and this year's second-round pick center John Michael Schmitz – the struggles of the entire unit and the two tackles drafted last year, in particular, have been a constant point of frustration, especially as the offense’s performance has floundered in recent weeks.
Giants offensive line coach Bobby Johnson was asked about why certain offensive linemen haven’t appeared to make a big second-year leap.
“I think there’s a lot of circumstances that go into it. You’re talking about ‘OK, well why hasn’t their performance gone up?’ Well, there’s other injuries around them, there’s moving of pieces and there’s no excuses, there’s just a lot of circumstances that go into it, it’s not happening in a vacuum,” he said, before shrugging his shoulders.
“So, they’ve made progress in ways maybe the average person hasn’t seen,” Johnson continued. “But I see a lot of growth in them from being a professional in their preparation and in their mindsets in trying to improve their craft, in their being a linemate and a brother and a teammate, so I see improvement.
“Obviously, we gotta put that improvement on the field and I understand the question.”
On the field, Johnson and offensive coordinator Mike Kafka both said that addressing the communication breakdowns on the offensive line that have been leading to sacks and negative plays has been a top priority, especially during this week of practice.
“Those are things that we are really tough on ourselves on and so we got to make sure that we tighten up that communication, tighten up our responsibilities, our fundamentals,” Kafka said on Thursday. “....So, we evaluate that hard and we go through the week and we study, we prep and we look at all those things and see how we can improve in that area.”
When it comes to the struggles of the offense and offensive line specifically, Kafka said that with football “it's really never one person or one group.”
“It’s an 11-man operation,” he said. “All the guys have got to be working at the same level of execution and we've all got to operate and execute better.”