Mike Kafka‘s plan to unlock the Giants‘ downfield passing attack reflects the evolution of New York‘s offensive coordinator as a play caller to maximize the team’s new personnel.
Call the Giants’ new scheme ‘Screen ‘Em Deep.’
Kafka showed a familiar, creative tendency this spring and summer in his second stint wearing the headset:
He forces linebackers and safeties to run from sideline to sideline with horizontal receiver routes and passing concepts, then aims for an explosive play with misdirection or a shot over the top.
But there was a new emphasis in Kafka’s game plans this preseason: a heavier-than-ever reliance on Giant screen passes near the line of scrimmage during Brian Daboll’s regime (10.1% of passes targeted, 4.7% to running backs, according to NFL NextGen Stats.).
And it just so happened that this preseason, the Giants offense also threw a higher percentage of vertical passes (21.7%) than they did in any of the past three seasons. And New York scored more points (107) than any other team in the NFL this August.
The preseason is a much smaller sample size than a regular season, but the difference is night and day from Kafka’s first preseason calling plays in 2022: The Giants targeted 7.0% screen passes, zero screens to running backs and only 7.1% vertical routes that summer.
One reason for the change is that the Giants have different players with some different skill sets.
New quarterbacks Russell Wilson and Jaxson Dart seem more adept at feathering screen passes than Daniel Jones was. Wilson’s deep ball is the best part of his game. Top running back Tyrone Tracy Jr. is a converted wide receiver. Rookie draft pick Cam Skattebo has good hands.
And Malik Nabers’ catch and run ability can be second to none if he snags a short completion in space.
It’s not just about Kafka maximizing the Giants’ talents, though. He is especially focused on putting specific defensive players into conflict, forcing them into difficult choices or indecision that buys the offense a split second to spring something big.
“When you’re building and constructing an offense, just in general, you want to force the defense to defend the whole entire width and depth of the field,” Kafka said in August. “There could be different elements of the run game that can attack it. There could be different elements of the pass game, screens, motions, vertical, levels type plays that can get that accomplished.
“So you’re looking at not only the space and spots on the field, you’re looking at the people that are in those spots,” the offensive coordinator said. “Maybe we want to attack a linebacker or a certain flat defender, maybe you want to attack a certain safety’s leverage, and how do you get that done based off of a certain action that may get that to influence that particular player.”
The rise of the screen pass in the Giants’ offense has been steady the past four years to help accomplish these goals, whether Kafka or Daboll has been the primary play caller.
In 2022, with Kafka as the lone play caller, they targeted the 5.6% of screens and 1.7% running back screens. In 2023, when Kafka, Daboll and quarterback Shea Tierney all received turns calling plays, the screen percentage rose to 8.1% with 2.7% going to running backs.
Even last year, in Daboll’s one season as the Giants’ full-time play caller, it continued to increase: the Giants targeted 9.5% of screen routes, including 3.6% to running backs.
So the preseason numbers of 10.1% screens and 4.7% screens to running backs could be just a fleeting three-game exhibition experiment.
But it certainly looks like a concerted effort to draw the defense down to the line of scrimmage, create misdirection and push defenders wide and in tight — all with an eye on trying to eventually get over the top.
After the Giants only targeted 7.1% of their passes vertically in 2022, they increased it to 17.2% in 2023, held it at 14.7% for 2024. And now it is all the way up to 21.7% this preseason.
“You’re thinking of the space, you’re thinking of putting stress on certain players, flat defenders, high-lows on backers, the width and depth of safeties, and then you start putting the people in those spots to do that with their strengths,” Kafka said. “It could be a speed receiver, it could be a bigger body on a matchup on a smaller body on defense. It could be quick motions and expanding the width to put that player in different stresses in terms of a run fit or a pass fit. That’s what we look at.”
Kafka carries Andy Reid’s Eagles and Chiefs offenses in his DNA as a former player and assistant to the future Hall of Famer. Reid’s Chiefs targeted 12.8% of their routes on screens in 2024, mostly to wide receivers, with 2.5% going to backs.
The Steelers, for whom Wilson started 11 games last season, targeted only 6.6% of routes on screens including a minimal 1.0% to backs.
In many ways, though, Kafka’s screen game feels like an extension of his emphasis on designed quarterback runs.
In 2022 with Kafka as full-time play caller, Jones averaged 7.6 carries per game for the Giants, a full carry more than his 6.6 average in 2023 and 2024 combined with Daboll more involved.
That was a key tactic the Giants used to gain first downs and draw defenses inside to then scheme Saquon Barkley off the edges and into space.
Wilson is not as mobile as Jones, but Kafka has shown a ton of designed quarterback runs anyway for both Wilson and Dart throughout camp.
The ultimate goal, of course, is to score more points. A lot more. The Giants deteriorated from averaging 21.5 points per game in 2022 to 15.6 in 2023 and 16.1 in 2024.
The best way to do that is to create explosive plays, to unlock Nabers, Darius Slayton and maybe even Jalin Hyatt and Beaux Collins deep down the field. Collins, the undrafted rookie, got a taste of catching one of Wilson’s bombs in the preseason.
It’s not as simple as just running those plays and chucking the ball up in the air, though. It requires a plan that forces defenses to worry about all the areas of the field just as much.
So far, here in 2025, it seems like the Giants intend to screen ’em deep. To draw them in and strike.
SAQUON NO. 1, DART NO. 2
Barkley, the Eagles’ star running back, was voted the best player in the entire NFL by his peers for the NFL Network’s annual Top 100 list after leaving New York and spending one Super Bowl season in Philadelphia … Dart, the Giants’ rookie, is now listed as the No. 2 QB on the Giants’ depth chart for their Week 1 opener at Washington. Dart has been the Giants’ 1b. quarterback in games and practices for weeks. This is just a paper change from the team’s initial “unofficial” preseason depth chart that had listed Jameis Winston temporarily as the No. 2 and Dart as the No. 3, despite Dart receiving more snaps and playing time and running the first-team offense in games.
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