What did we learn from the Giants’ 26-3 win over the Miami Dolphins?

Yes, your 3-0 New York Football Giants were PFF’s top-ranked team in the 2025 preseason. It made sense based on a victory on the road over Super Bowl contender Buffalo, plus a blowout 31-12 win over the Jets and an an even bigger 42-10 stomping of the woeful Patriots, who did little in Drake Maye’s rookie season. Russell Wilson, Jameis Winston, and Jaxson Dart gave the Giants their best quarterback room in ages, and No. 3 draft pick Abdul Carter was going to make an already strong Giants pass rush even stronger.

The regular season didn’t quite turn out that way for the Giants. Not for the Patriots, either. The preseason performance rankings did have some merit otherwise - Super Bowl Champion Seattle and NFL Championship Game losers Denver and Los Angeles were right there in the top seven as well, as was Chicago, who took a big step forward in Caleb Williams’ sophomore season and gave the Rams all they could handle. John Harbaugh’s perennial playoff Ravens team was no surprise in the No. 2 preseason spot, but things didn’t turn out so well for Harbaugh’s team once the games counted.

So there’s not really a lot we can tell from preseason games other than which players’ stock might be rising or falling as cutdowns loom in the fairly near future. Many of the Giants’ starters did not play in tonight’s rain-soaked game against the Miami Dolphins. On top of that, the Dolphins are undergoing a major rebuild, and their few recognizable starters played little or not at all either. As a result the Giants dominated this game from start to finish, but without making any of their roster decisions any clearer. Let’s try to read the tea leaves to the extent we can, though.

Cam Skattebo, who was in a rotation with Tyrone Tracy last year before getting hurt, is pretty clearly the lead running back now. The question is what the depth chart is behind him. Skattebo did not play against Miami. Tracy did, and he promptly coughed up the ball untouched when he tried to switch it to his other hand before hitting the line. In isolation that wouldn’t matter much, but Tracy has developed a reputation for fumbling when hit, so an unforced error like this is magnified. On the other hand, Devin Singletary, who seemed to become No. 3 on the depth chart last year after the emergence of Skattebo, gained 40 yards on eight carries, including one from the Miami 13 in which he hit the right side of the line, saw no hole, and bounced it outside, and he was quick enough to get around the corner and take it in for a TD. In the second half, the usually forgotten 2023 draft pick Eric Gray tried the same thing, but he did not have the quickness to get upfield. (Gray did have 37 receiving yards on 6 catches.) Singletary was a prime cut candidate entering 2026 but he agreed to take a cut from $6.5M to $2.845M, some of that in incentives. Especially with Najee Harris (who did not play) now in the fold, it will be interesting to see whether Harbaugh and Greg Roman prefer the more explosive but more erratic Tracy to the more reliable but less spectacular Singletary, and whether the more powerful Harris can displace any of them when final cuts are made.

With exciting running back De’Von Achane, one of Miami’s few remaining blue chip players, not playing, starting quarterback Malik Willis sitting as well, and Jayden Waddle gone, the Dolphins’ offense posed little threat to the Giants’ defense. That said, other than a couple of 9-yard sprints up the middle by starting quarterback Cam Miller to escape the pass rush, the Dolphins’ run game did little, accumulating only 32 yards on 16 rushes. There were few holes in the middle of the line for them to run through. The most notable players in the interior were Zacch Pickens (2 tackles for -6 yards) and draftee Bobby Jamison-Travis (1 tackle for -3 yards), each of whom had a sack as well.

In 2023 rookie first-round pick Deonte Banks showed some promise as a man cover cornerback who would contest catches. That Banks disappeared in 2024 and 2025, but he was active again today contesting catches. The even bigger mystery was 2024 third round pick Dru Phillips, who impressed as a rookie when playing close to the line but who clearly regressed in his second season as opponents started to expose him in the passing game. Second round 2024 pick Tyler Nubin was less impressive as a rookie but was awful in 2025. Both played better Saturday, with three tackles apiece. Phillips was beaten on one pass play but he was actually in good position, and he forced two fumbles.

Quarterback Jameis Winston tried to get the ball to Odell Beckham Jr. when he entered the game, targeting him four times. One one play OBJ made the catch and then put a nice move on the defensive back to get more yards and a first down. That play had the look of a player you want on the team. Then a little later, Winston found OBJ in the back of the end zone for a leaping catch and a TD … except that Beckham let the ball go through his hands.

At this point, I think it’s fair to say that Beckham can still get open against NFL defensive backs. There was another play on which he went downfield and seemed to beat his man but was not thrown to. Whether this will be enough to get him a place on the 53 remains to be seen. Of note is that Darius Slayton, who’d been invisible last week, caught four balls in six targets for 58 yards, leading the Giants. Calvin Austin had two catches in two targets for 24 yards. How the wide receiver depth chart is going to play out after Malik Nabers and Malachi Fields is anyone’s guess at this point.

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