Giants set off alarm on cornerback Deonte Banks' starting job
Giants cornerback Deonte Banks at training camp on Tuesday. Credit: Ed Murray
The narrative around the cornerback battle currently underway at Giants training camp this summer is that Deonte Banks is fighting for a starting job. But it’s much more than that.
The former first-round pick is teetering on the edge of that wasteland no player ever wants to descend into, the place where he is labeled just about the worst thing a highly touted prospect can be termed: A bust.
He’s not there yet. As Banks enters his third NFL season there is still time. After what he called “kind of like a sophomore slump” last year that included a few incidents where his effort was publicly called into question by the coaches, though, his grace period is just about up.
By this time next season we will know if the Giants decided to pick up the fifth-year option on his rookie contract. By this time next year we will know if Banks can be a functional and contributing player for the team or if he is doomed to join the likes of Eli Apple, Ereck Flowers, DeAndre Baker and Kadarius Toney as first-round flops from the past decade.
“I don’t really think about it,” Banks said on Tuesday regarding the big picture and his legacy. “I’m just getting better every day. . . . Just finishing plays and being a better me.”
The Giants, though, are thinking about it. They’re doing something about it, too. Despite many shortcomings by the entire three-win team last year that included an awful offense and a terrible run defense, it was the coaches in the secondary — Banks’ coaches — who paid the price for the disappointment with their jobs. While most of the staff remained in place the Giants fired defensive backs/passing game coordinator Jerome Henderson (one of the outspoken critics of Banks) along with safeties coach Michael Treier. They brought in Jeff Burris to coach the cornerbacks and Marquand Manuel as their secondary coach/passing game coordinator to give Banks two new voices in his ear.
“I like them a lot,” Banks said. “I like how they teach. I like how they talk to me. I just like them a lot. They’re good coaches.”
They also signed Paulson Adebo as a veteran free agent to lock down the top cornerback spot, giving Banks a mentor in the position room and alleviating the pressure on him to cover the opposing teams’ top receivers.
“He just teaches me a lot, such as we talk about finishing plays a lot,” Banks said of Paulson. “What [Commanders cornerback] Marshon [Lattimore] taught him, he kind of teaches me the same thing.”
The Giants are giving Banks just about everything he needs to succeed. The only thing they aren’t giving him? The job. That’s up to him to take.
For the first time since he arrived as the 24th overall pick in 2023 Banks’ name isn’t inked into a spot in the starting 11. He’s not even penciled at this point. He’s been splitting reps with Cor’Dale Flott between the first and second teams and the two of them have been neck-and-neck in a battle to see who will emerge with the title.
“It’s good competition,” coach Brian Daboll said of that showdown. “Competition brings out the most in people . . . most of the time.”
That last part after the short pause is what the Giants want to find out about Banks.
They already know it about Flott. He’s been an under-sized, sometimes-injured, often on the fringe of the roster player for them who arrived as a third-round pick in 2022. Flott has been fighting to make the team and carve out a role in the defense for three seasons already and is steeled for this latest challenge with a starting job at stake.
“In this league you are always fighting for a job,” Flott told Newsday of his big opportunity. “Nothing is given to you. You don’t just walk out on the field and they say ‘Hey, you’re our starting corner for the rest of the season.’”
It felt a little like that’s exactly what happened with Banks in his first two seasons. No longer. That time is over . . . and it’s running out on Banks.
He still has a little bit more of it to make a positive impression, to become a guy the Giants can count on to play hard and make important stops. There have been other cornerbacks who took time to develop. Corey Webster was a Giant who was considered a missed pick early in his career and he became a cornerstone of two championship teams.
“As a coach, we’re trying to teach him what to do, show him how to do it and really demand that they do it that way,” Daboll said in regard to Banks. “It’s ultimately the responsibility of the player to go out there and do that. . . . Tae is out there competing, playing faster. He’s going to have to go out there and perform at a high level. Everybody is. You make sure these guys have to earn it to go out there and get play time and help us produce.”
The spectrum for first-round draft picks ranges from bust to Hall of Famer. Right now Banks is neither. But wherever he ultimately winds up on that bell curve — and on this year’s defensive depth chart — he’ll have earned that, too.
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.
