With a lot of the league struggling offensively, the Giants look surprisingly decent.
They got completely shut down in Week 1, but that loss doesn’t look so awful now that the Vikings have also caused headaches for the 49ers and Texans. New York has scored 3 TDs in each of its last two games, against Washington and Cleveland. Dallas, meanwhile, has about the most disappointing defense in the league, allowing 10 touchdowns in back-to-back home losses against the Saints and Ravens. The Giants should score 2 TDs (which is above-average this year); they reasonably could even score 3.
Devin Singletary sure looks good. Dallas has been a disaster against the run, allowing 464 yards and 7 TDs in its last two games. While the Giants don’t run the ball to that level, Singletary has been playing well. He’s run for 160 yards on 32 carries in his last two games, with 2 TDs (and it would have been 3 had he not intentionally slid to the ground at the 1-yard line late in the Browns game). If the Giants and Cowboys play anything like they have recently, Singletary will put up top-10 numbers among running backs this week – should get a ton of carries. Coming off these two embarrassing losses, no doubt the Cowboys will be looking to mix things up (as the Colts did last week to end their run defense skid) but this is a Thursday game, making those changes more difficult. Singletary has averaged 3 catches for 19 yards in his first three games.
Malik Nabers looks very good. He’s uber talented, and they’re sending a ton of balls his way. Three games in, he’s on pace to break or tie all of the rookie receiving records – targets, catches, yards, touchdowns. The matchup looks fine, as far as we can tell. Dallas was very good against the pass last year, but it’s a defense that’s in complete disarray right now. With the Cowboys needing to allocate more resources into stopping the run, that will make it harder to focus on Nabers. He caught 8 passes for 78 yards and 2 TDs at Cleveland last week, which on paper is a much harder matchup than this one.
Daniel Jones tends to be a lightning rod for criticism, some of which is justified. He’s got lousy pocket presence and isn’t accurate on downfield throws. But there have been spurts of production (for fantasy purposes, anyway). He averaged top-10 per-game numbers as a rookie, and in the second half of his first season with Brian Daboll. Jones started the season with a clunker against the Vikings (who’ve made Brock Purdy and C.J. Stroud look bad the last two weeks), but Jones has been trending upwards recently, with 2 TD passes in back-to-back games. He threw for only 178 yards at Washington, but that was due in part to the defense not being able to get Jayden Daniels off the field. Some of those same issues could be at play with Dak Prescott, but makes sense to slot Jones above a good number of the league’s struggling starters.
With Nabers dominating the passing game, New York’s other wide receivers look like contributors rather than players anybody wants to be counting on for production. Darius Slayton has caught only 7 passes for 66 yards, with no touchdowns. Wan’Dale Robinson makes more sense, particularly in PPR formats. He’s averaging only 8.2 yards per catch, but he’s caught 15 balls, including a touchdown.
Rookie Theo Johnson is starting at tight end. He’s caught only 2 of the 7 passes thrown his way so far. He was wide open for a short touchdown last week, but the throw was off target.
Greg Joseph missed his only field goal attempt at Cleveland, but the Giants are sticking with him. It’s a short week, and the kicker on the practice squad, Jude McAtamney, has never played in a regular-season game. The Giants have scored only 9 kicking points in three games, though this looks like a decent enough matchup, with Dallas struggling defensively. (But a below-average grade for Joseph makes sense.)
The Giants Defense looks like an above-average choice for sacks. They didn’t sack Dak Prescott in either game last year, but the Cowboys don’t have a great offensive line nowadays. Prescott, in fact, has been sacked at least 3 times in nine of his last 10 games. The Giants, meanwhile, have 5 and 8 sacks in their last two. Prescott looks less promising for interceptions (only 9 last year, and his only 2 this season both came against the Saints).
This report is just a small snippet of the Week 4 edition of Fantasy Index Weekly, part of the In-Season Analyst & Super Fanatic Packages. The newsletter includes our player rankings and 20-plus pages of matchup previews, plus stat projections and custom rankings for the games being played this weekend.
Haven't ordered yet? BUY IT NOW! Already a subscriber? LOG IN!