With high hopes for his future, Giants give Xavier McKinney a chance to run the defense

A year ago this week, the Giants were implementing contingency plans in the wake of Xavier McKinney’s injury. The rookie second-round pick had fractured a bone in his foot that required surgery and the team knew he would be sidelined for the majority of the season.

This year, McKinney is the contingency.

That’s why, despite most of the projected starters spending Sunday’s preseason game against the Browns on the sideline, McKinney was on the field. The Giants know what he can do in terms of coverage and tackling, but they wanted to give him exposure to something else: Leading the defense.

"We wanted to get him out there and let him be in a signal-caller role," Joe Judge said of the now second-year safety who, fully healed, figures to be an important piece in what should be a very strong secondary. "When Logan (Ryan) is on the field, Logan handles the majority of the calls. We just wanted to give (McKinney) some game reps of being out there and running the huddle, making the on-field checks, and getting prepared for the season."

It’s just another example of what McKinney might be able to do for the Giants not only this year but in the years to come. The Giants saw only a glimpse of that during his abbreviated rookie season. This year they are hoping to finally be able to fully use the dynamic player they drafted 16 months ago.

"When I came in, that was my mindset," McKinney said. "That’s always my mindset, that I could be a big-time player. That’s what I’m out here to work on every day."

The Giants have four starting-caliber safeties that they will shuffle around the defensive backfield in an attempt to make life miserable for opposing teams. Jabrill Peppers will likely play closer to the line of scrimmage and be the muscle of that group. Ryan, the ninth-year veteran who signed with the Giants last year when McKinney went down, is the air traffic controller who directs the action. Julian Love is so versatile and can plug so many holes that Judge and others have given him the nickname "Duct Tape."

And McKinney? He’s the ballhawk. He’s the one who will be asked to not only display the fundamentals he has been taught but go beyond them and make game-changing plays.

"A lot of that is just being able to trust your ability to go make that play instead of just going back and waiting on it, so I pride myself on that," he said of his knack for such splashy reps. "That’s something that I remind myself of before every practice, before every game, is to go attack the ball rather than wait for something to happen. Obviously, I still do what’s right for the team, but when that opportunity is there, I try to seize the opportunity."

That’s what happened on one of the last snaps of the 2020 season. With 1:15 left in the Week 17 win over Dallas, McKinney picked off Andy Dalton in the end zone to help seal a 23-19 win. It was the first interception of his career and it gave Giants fans an exciting glimpse of what they can expect from McKinney.

The Giants themselves, though, were unmoved by the play.

Said Judge: "We didn’t need that (interception) to see he was going to be the player we thought he was going to be."

A player who can make a difference for a defense and who, despite just six NFL games of experience and only one playing a full load of snaps, is having more added to his job description almost every day.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

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.