New York Giants left tackle Andrew Thomas did not have a particularly successful rookie season. He started slow, suffered through some injuries and eventually finished strong, but it was nothing worth writing home about.
Despite that turbulent first season, Pro Football Focus recently named Thomas the Giants’ most underrated player heading into the 2021 regular-season.
With the performance of other rookie tackles such as Tristan Wirfs, Mekhi Becton and Jedrick Wills Jr., it would be easy to dismiss Andrew Thomas as a bad pick. However, the Giants extensively reworked his technique, and we saw far better play from him as the season wore on. He earned just one PFF pass-blocking grade below 59.0 over the second half of the season, whereas every single outing before Week 8 fell below that mark. Outside of one disastrous game against Arizona, his pass-blocking grade was above 70.0 from Week 8 onwards.
There is more upside to Thomas than some would have you believe after those early-season struggles, but fair or not, he’ll forever be compared to Wirfs, Becton and Wills Jr.
If the Giants wish to take a step forward in 2021, their offensive line will need to play substantially better than it did a year ago. Thomas is an incredibly important piece to that group as he protects Daniel Jones’ blind side.
The good news? If you put your stock in head coach Joe Judge and trust his word, he genuinely believes they have the right group in place and expects them to take a major leap forward this season, Thomas included.
