Blue Liar.

Welcome back.

It's the big blue banter.

New York Giants football podcast.

I'm Dan Schneier.

Joined as always my co-ist, Nick, and I'm starting to get really excited, Nick.

We're at this point days away from the Giants, 2003.

This week one opener.

And with that excitement comes a lot of exciting talk.

So we're going to do today a little episode here on the breakout picks that we have for the New York Giants football team in 2023.

After that, we're going to have a sleeper's podcast.

We're also going to have a podcast later in the week breaking down the five things that have us most excited about this Giants team.

We're going to have a final thoughts podcast just before the game. And maybe some other stuff, too. We don't know. But those are the big things on the agenda right now, Nick. But before we do that, Nick, I want to qualify what we mean by breakout and then what we mean by sleeper on that episode. We'll do that. By breakout, what we mean is this. A player who can far exceed expectations,

but not in the sense of a sleeper, as in they're not being discussed enough. A sleeper is someone who

hasn't been discussed enough or the narrative hasn't really focused on them in training camp

in the preseason. A breakout could be anyone who the narrative has focused on, but we believe

has a chance to have their best season yet as a giant and potentially be a much bigger impact player than some of who these sleepers are. We always have this debate on fantasy football today, Nick, about what actually is a sleeper and what actually is a breakout. There's no real definition, but those are the parameters we are using today. So our breakout picks from last year, Nick, now that we can go over that, we hit on three of four. Now, we might have had more, but these are the ones I remember. Andrew Thomas, who had already broken out in 2021, we said would be breaking out as a top three offensive tackle in the NFL last year. I think he succeeded in that. We had Dexter Lawrence. That one's obvious. We had Sequin Barclay. That one is pretty

obvious as well. We also had Xavier McKinney. That was a miss. So can't get him all right, Nick, but I don't remember the rest, but we hit on a few last year. We're going to hope to go 100% this year, but that's obviously not as easy to do as it's as it is to say it. Dexter Lawrence one was a slam dunk though it's like going to be playing a little bit more nose. We had a high regard for Andre Patterson, rightfully so, for the way he has developed in groomed defensive lineman when he was with Minnesota. And that one just was a slam dunk. I'm absolutely ecstatic about it. And I expect to see Dexter Lawrence retain that now with Leonard Williams, A Sean Robinson and Nacho playing next to him.

I think it's going to alleviate some of the burden on him.

He's not going to be playing the fourth most defensive line snaps at 345 pounds.

Hopefully not.

But he'll be out there in those key situations to rush the passer and just absolutely dominate

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