The Giants have a Darius Alexander question hiding in plain sight, and it might become a lot more important once the pads come on. The defensive line does not need another fun camp name. It needs a young player who can take real snaps from veterans without the whole front getting soft.
Here is where Alexander gets interesting.
Darius Alexander is being framed as a legitimate candidate to lead the interior defensive linemen in snaps, which says a lot about both his upside and the state of the room. D.J. Reader will be 32 when the season starts, Shelby Harris will be 34, and neither has reached 60 percent of defensive snaps in any of the last three seasons.
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Alexander still has to prove the hard part. He has the size to hold up against the run and the athleticism to create pressure, but the NFL is not handing him a three-down role because he looks good in shorts. Rookie defensive linemen find that out fast.
Still, the path is there. Reader and Harris can be useful, but the Giants probably do not want either one carrying a monster snap share through the season. If both veterans live around the 50 percent range, Alexander can carve out a meaningful job without being thrown into the deep end.
I like that kind of development plan. It is not glamorous, and nobody is buying a ticket for interior snap distribution, but that stuff decides whether a defense can survive December.
The Giants have enough edge rush juice to make the outside look scary. Brian Burns , Kayvon Thibodeaux , and Abdul Carter give them multiple ways to bother quarterbacks. The interior has to make that pressure matter by keeping the pocket from becoming a clean escape hatch.
Alexander does not need to become a star right away. He needs to be sturdy enough on early downs and disruptive enough in passing spots that the coaches trust him when the game is still live.
If that happens, the Giants get younger, deeper, and more explosive up front without forcing Reader or Harris into roles that make less sense at this stage. It would be a quiet win, but quiet wins on the defensive line tend to show up loudly by midseason.
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