Giants asking new cornerback Isaac Yiadom to get up to speed quickly
Cornerback Isaac Yiadom while in Broncos training camp. Credit: Getty Images/Dustin Bradford
Patrick Graham was asked late last week if Isaac Yiadom, the cornerback the Giants acquired in a trade with the Broncos at the end of training camp but who has been able to participate in just four on-field practices with the team, would be ready to play heading into Monday’s regular-season opener against the Steelers.
"If you’re long, you’re fast and you get your hands on the receivers," the defensive coordinator said, raising his own hand, "then I vote yes."
That doesn’t mean Yiadom will play a significant role in the game. Nor does it even mean he will be among the active players 90 minutes ahead of kickoff. But Yiadom does have something else going for him besides the skill set Graham mentioned. He plays cornerback, and while that is one of the more difficult spots in the NFL it also happens to be one of the easiest to be dropped into and asked to perform right away.
"As a corner, especially playing outside, you’re going to play pretty much the same thing," Giants starter James Bradberry said. "The hardest thing to learn is the terminology. Quarters is quarters. Cover-2, cover-3. Man is going to be man. Cover-3 is going to be cover-3 for a corner outside . . . Once they pick up the terminology, I wouldn’t say it’s easy, but it’s easier to learn it after that."
That’ll be helpful for the Giants because in the last two weeks their secondary has changed quite a bit. They’ve brought in two potential starters in Yiadom and safety Logan Ryan and are trying to bring them up to speed on the fly. Ryan has the benefit of having spent a good deal of his career with the Patriots, who run a system similar to what the Giants are using this season. Yiadom has less hands-on background.
"In this business there are guys always in and out the door," safety Jabrill Peppers said. "It’s kind of easy to jell together because we all know we’re all here for one common goal and that’s to win. Football is football, things don’t change. Just the terminologies and things like that do. It’s not as challenging, but it does take a little while to build that cohesion."
That’s something the Giants don’t have a lot of with kickoff down to being measured in hours away.
Not that it matters. The Giants may need to rely on their newcomers just as much as the other unproven players who will be in the rotation in the secondary, among them second-year corner and projected starter Corey Ballentine, third-year pro Brandon Williams and rookie Darnay Holmes.
"We’re talking about the Pittsburgh Steelers coming into town," Graham said. "Ben Roethlisberger, he has a bunch of wide receivers. Think about how many defensive backs we are going to need out on that field. We can’t think about the traditional two-corner deal. They have speed all over that field, all those guys. A matchup against these guys is hard because of all the speed they have on the field. All the wide receivers potentially, the backs are fast and they play like receivers. It’s going to be tough, it’s going to be a competitive situation. We’ll do what we think is best that week.
"We just have to see how everything plays out."
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.
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