Giants' Kayvon Thibodeaux seeks leading role, and spotlight
Giants defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux reacts during an NFL game against the Colts on Jan. 1 in East Rutherford, N.J. Credit: AP/Adam Hunger
The Just Another Game vibe in the Giants’ locker room this week is so pervasive that most of the players and coaches are going about their business with an eerie numbness to their surroundings.
They know they are in the playoffs, they know the stakes, but their main mental objective, it seems, is to dissociate themselves from those ideas.
Calm and poise would be the buzzwords if buzzing were allowed.
“I think Coach [Brian] Daboll has been doing a good job of letting guys know that whatever has gotten you to this point, keep doing that,” defensive lineman Leonard Williams said. “This isn’t the time to try new things and get too emotional or get too high. For me, I try to be even every game, and it works for me.”
That approach may work for the vast majority of them. But even Williams conceded: “Everybody is a little different.”
If Kayvon Thibodeaux has shown anything in his rookie season, it’s that he is, in fact, a lot different.
That even-keel way of going about things? It may be effective for Williams and Daniel Jones and Saquon Barkley, but it does not suit him.
Thibodeaux is a player who has always been keenly aware of the stage on which he is playing, and the bigger it has gotten this season, the better he has performed. The pinnacle of his brief NFL career thus far came, naturally, in a Sunday night game in Washington.
Before that game, he was asked about playing in prime time. “Prime time loves me,” he said, then went out and proved it.
Sunday’s wild card game against the Vikings isn’t technically a prime-time game, but the spotlight of the playoffs will be the brightest that has shown on this team all season. Thibodeaux is ready to step into it.
“I just want to put on display what I worked so hard to cultivate leading up to this moment,” he told Newsday of his goals for Sunday.
Big players show up in big games, but so too do big personalities. There are not many bigger on the Giants’ roster than Thibodeaux. The world is about to get its close-up of him, and he knows it.
“I do sense that from him,” Williams said of Thibodeaux’s penchant for performance. “He gets a little amped up [for big games], and it works for him.”
Said Dexter Lawrence: “I think he’s been more locked in this week knowing the ultimate goal. He’s embracing his moment. He understands this doesn’t happen all the time. He understands this is for all the marbles.”
Thibodeaux is not the best player on the defense. That title belongs to Lawrence. He doesn’t lead the team in sacks; Lawrence and Azeez Ojulari have him beat there. He’s not the fastest or strongest or smartest one out there.
But he has something that can’t be taught or even honed.
The eye is always drawn to him. The big moments and big plays always seem to find him.
The key to executing those, Thibodeaux said, is a willingness to give it all.
“You have to dig deep,” he said. “You tap into whatever level of dog you got and try to call upon it. Having that relentlessness and knowing that no matter how tired you are, there are only one or two more plays that you have to dominate.”
That’s in the regular season. In the playoffs, he said, every snap is like that.
“That’s the next step,” he said. “That’s what makes it different.”
When he was growing up, Thibodeaux didn’t watch much of the NFL playoffs. He said the one game he can actually recall seeing was the Minneapolis Miracle in 2018, when Stefon Diggs caught a walk-off 61-yard touchdown pass as time expired to give the Vikings a divisional-round win over the Saints.
“Crazy game,” he said.
One with an iconic signature moment.
The kind Thibodeaux certainly is capable of providing.
The kind he undoubtedly is hungry to produce.
He did note that he has learned throughout this season that he doesn’t have to do those things all by himself. He mentioned that the Giants have 19 different players with at least half a sack.
“That’s a tribute to the work that everybody puts in and understanding that I’m not always going to be the premier guy to make plays,” he said. “I might be setting up someone else. You have to have that selfless mentality to make it work.”
Stars like Thibodeaux, though, usually are able to glow through all of that football mumbo jumbo and shine their brightest at times like these.
“He can’t carry the whole load,” Williams said. “There is a lot that has to happen in a game for us to win. But him having a big day does help us win. I try not to put too much pressure on him. Just let him do him.”
It’s what players such as Thibodeaux tend to do best.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
