New York Giants veteran wide receiver Darius Slayton is watching the prime of his career slip away in another lost season. He could have been traded at the deadline this October but wasn’t since the Giants really didn’t have the desire to do so.
Instead, Slayton is wallowing away on a Giants team that is dead last in the NFL in scoring, has used four quarterbacks, and has difficulty moving the football through the air.
The 27-year-old Slayton is healthy and has made his share of plays this season, catching 37 of 65 targets for 520 yards and a touchdown, but he’s here mainly to supplement and tutor the team’s younger wideouts such as Malik Nabers, Wan’Dale Robinson and Jalin Hyatt.
Slayton will be a free agent after this season. It looks like he’d to stay with the Giants but one would have to ask why. His 2019 draft mate, quarterback Daniel Jones, is gone, leaving just him and Dexter Lawrence as the longest-tenured Giants.
On Sunday, the Giants were trounced by the Baltimore Ravens, 35-14, at MetLife Stadium. It was their ninth straight defeat, tying the franchise record, last equaled in 2019.
Slayton has seen losing in his six seasons with the Giants, but nothing like this. They have had only one winning season (2022) since he’s gotten here. Since the beginning of 2023, they have been a team in what appears to be an irreversible death spiral.
After Sunday’s game, he had the indignity of comparing the current steak to the one in 2019.
“I mean from a streak, losing, it’s somewhat similar, but I mean, very different team at that time but I would probably say that our roster then isn’t what it is now,” he said. “So, yeah.”
In 2021, the Giants lost their last seven games under head coach Joe Judge to finish out the season at 4-13. Slayton was around for that mess, too.
“2021 was its own beast; that was its own deal but yeah, I wouldn’t compare this year to that year,” he said. “We just had a lot of other stuff going on that year that we don’t have necessarily going on now. We’re just losing. That is the only real common denominator between the two.”
Slayton doesn’t think there will be wholesale changes this time like there were back in 2021 when Judge was fired.
“I don’t see it happening with this staff. It seems like everybody will be here,” he said in a clip that the team edited out of their public transcript. “It just doesn’t feel like there’s going to be any changes made, which is fine”
Not everyone thinks that way. This year also comes with a fan revolt with planes flying banners over the stadium past two games demanding changes.
“I have not seen either plane, either this week or last week,” Slayton said. “I mean, people got time and money, that’s how they choose to spend it, it on them.”
Fans expect better and Slayton has been around long enough to know that. He understands their pain because he’s feeling it, too.
“I mean, everybody’s entitled to their own opinion,” Slayton said. “I understand the fans’ perspective, the frustration and all that type of thing. At the end of the day, I think we have a talented roster, I think they’ve built a talented roster here and we just have to do a couple things a little bit better to get it back going in the right direction.”
Whether Slayton will be around when the Giants finally get going in the right direction remains to be seen. He can probably get more money elsewhere and not have to endure the losing he’s seen for the better part of six years now.
