beyond the back page How to build the next great Giants team By Ryan Dunleavy Published Aug. 12, 2026, 7:56 a.m. ET The Giants' Brian Burns and Abdul Carter celebrate making a stop against the Commanders on Dec. 14, 2025. Getty Images Somewhere in the depths of MetLife Stadium lies a storage room containing the blueprints for building the Giants into a championship team.
How else do you explain that the Giants’ plan for a better future — after posting the worst cumulative record in the NFL since 2023 — is to replicate their past by building a dominant defensive front seven?
“They have the blueprint that we copied from Lawrence Taylor and Harry Carson and Leonard Marshall [in the 1980s],” Antonio Pierce, a middle linebacker and captain for the Super Bowl XLII champion Giants, told Sports+ this week. “When the Giants win Super Bowls, it’s about that front. I love offense and it sells tickets and everybody gets excited, but if you can rush four — which we know they can with those three defensive ends [Brian Burns, Abdul Carter and Kayvon Thibodeaux] — and you draft a freak-of-nature linebacker in Arvell Reese, you have a package you can dial up.”
