The New York Giants’ defense is undergoing a transformation this offseason. Several captains were sent packing (Dexter Lawrence, Bobby Okereke), and new faces that fit the vision of the new regime under head coach John Harbaugh have been brought in.
One of the biggest changes is at off-ball linebacker, where free agent Tremaine Edmunds and top draft pick Arvell Reese will be stationed this season. They are taking the places of Okereke and Micah McFadden, who is now a backup.
The obvious difference between the old and new players is height. Okereke and McFadden are listed at 6-foot-2. The incoming pair are 6-foot-4 or taller.
Tom Rock of Newsday recently spoke to Edmunds about the shift to taller players in the off-ball linebacker community.
“I said to him (Reese), ‘There are not a lot of times that you find someone that you are looking eye-level with, at least for me, because I have always kind of been an outlier as far as one of the taller guys,'” Edmonds said. “But the league is changing. A lot of teams are going out and getting taller with some bigger guys. That’s life in the NFL. It’s always evolving.”
The Giants are not looking to become trend-setters here; they’re just keeping current with the times. The tradition was to have lower-to-the-ground players in the linebacker ranks. No more. Big, tall, fast is in vogue.
According to Stathead Football, the average size of an NFL linebacker in 2025 was 6 feet, 2.12 inches, but that included outside linebackers as well; they tend to skew taller. Brian Burns and Kayvon Thibodeaux, for example, are 6-5 and Abdul Carter is 6-4.
It’s rare to find the kind of height the Giants now have with their off-the-ball skyscrapers because of the variety of skills and requirements called for by the position. Those players have to be able to plug holes at the line of scrimmage and drop back into coverage. They need to be bulldozers and drag racers.
The choice of Reese with the fifth overall pick in this year’s draft makes a ton of sense now. It did at the time as well, but now, you can see the vision the Giants are forming for their defense.
“He is 6-4-plus, 240-something pounds, yet he moves like a smaller guy,” Harbaugh said of Reese at the Giants’ recent minicamp. “He moves his feet. He can flip his hips. Very natural-looking mover off the ball, which was something we saw on tape. We thought we saw it, but now we saw it on the practice field, so we feel better about it.’’
Opposing offenses won’t, though. The Giants plan on being everything all at once this year on defense.
This article originally appeared on Giants Wire: New York Giants have made notable transformation at inside linebacker
Reporting by John Fennelly, Giants Wire / Giants Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
