Darius Slayton has played with seven different Giants quarterbacks, four offensive coordinators and three head coaches since the team drafted him in 2019. But he has remained stunningly consistent.
How consistent?
Slayton is on the verge of leading the Giants in receiving yards for the fourth time in his five-year NFL career. He has a team-high 512 yards entering the Giants’ Christmas Day game at the Philadelphia Eagles, 88 yards ahead of tight end Darren Waller.
“I think it just says I found a way,” Slayton, 26, said humbly on Wednesday. “Somehow, someway, I found a way. And I’ve done my best to do my best since I’ve been here.”
Slayton’s 38 catches for 512 yards and a touchdown are below his own standard for production, of course. The Giants’ offense as a whole strives for way more than what they’ve put on the field this year.
But it says a lot about Slayton that he has been so productive through a ton of organizational turmoil and upheaval and his own personal trials. Staying with the same team for five straight years in the NFL is an accomplishment in itself nowadays, after all, especially for a fifth-round pick from Auburn.
“I’d probably argue that most people in their first five years that had the amount of coaches and quarterbacks that I’ve played with, they’d probably have been on multiple teams,” Slayton said, “whereas I’ve been on one.”
Everyone knows Slayton is a good player. Plus he has stayed healthy and available, playing in 73 of a possible 80 career regular season games entering the Christmas game in Philly. And he has played the second-most snaps (80%) for the Giants offense this season behind only right guard Ben Bredeson (90%).
Still, corner Adoree Jackson was impressed to learn that Slayton is about to top the Giants’ wide receivers for the fourth time in five years.
“That’s a crazy stat,” Jackson said. “That’s an honor. But it shows how he works, how his attitude is, and if you don’t get the credit, at least you might get the debit. Sometimes that’s all that matters.”
Slayton started his run in 2019 with a breakout rookie season under head coach Pat Shurmur and offensive coordinator Mike Shula, catching 48 passes for a team-high 740 yards and eight touchdowns.
Eli Manning started that season as the Giants’ quarterback, and Slayton’s classmate Daniel Jones took over early.
In 2020, with head coach Joe Judge and offensive coordinator Jason Garrett, Slayton again led the team in yards with 751 on 50 catches with three TDs. Jones and Colt McCoy both played under center that year.
In 2021, Kenny Golladay led the team with 521 receiving yards as Garrett’s firing gave way to Freddie Kitchens. Slayton had 26 catches for 339 yards and two TDs as Jones’ season-ending neck injury gave way to backups Mike Glennon and Jake Fromm.
By then, Slayton had grown accustomed to adapting to change.
“It’s always different with everybody,” he said. “With some people it’s a smoother transition because they’re a little more natural of a fit. Other people you’ve got to figure out how you feel with them, whether that be a quarterback or a coach. So just having an awareness in navigating and open communication helps to speed the process of those things coming together.”
When Dave Gettleman and Judge got fired, the new regime of Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll squeezed Slayton into taking a pay cut to stay on the roster. It was a humbling and difficult time for a player who always had given his best and led the team in receiving yards for two of his first three seasons.
But Slayton handled it like a professional and bounced back in 2022, leading the team with 724 receiving yards on 46 catches with two TDs, as Jones had his best year at QB. And that earned Slayton a two-year extension last spring.
“He doesn’t talk,” Jackson said in describing Slayton’s steadiness. “He gets the work done and doesn’t really trip off the credit of different things. He just goes out there and has joy, has a blast. And when a lot of other people may get the ball and touches, he’s celebrating, cheering, getting excited. Your time’s gonna come when you get to make plays, and he makes the most out of the ones that come his way.”
Slayton credited special teams coordinator Thomas McGaughey with providing perspective to help him navigate the challenge of proving himself all over again in 2022.
“TMac, when I was in my second year, he was talking to a special teams meeting one time and had a quote that said, ‘Everything earned is still given,’” Slayton said. “At that time, it was one of those things I kept in my mind: You feel like you’ve earned things in life sometimes, you feel like you’ve done enough to secure certain things in life, but the reality is no matter what you’ve done, somebody still has to give you an opportunity.”
“Somebody still has to give you a chance to show or a chance to play or whatever,” he continued. “When you’re given a job in the regular world, somebody has to give you the job no matter how qualified you are. So that for me is a humbling [thought] and perspective. Basically to me I take it as, ‘You’ve never done enough.’ There’s always more to be done. There’s always more that could be done. You can always be better. And I strive to better myself every year.”
Unfortunately, this season has gone poorly for the Giants as an offense and as a team.
It got so frustrating that the typically-reserved Slayton lost his cool at wide receivers coach Mike Groh on the sideline at Dallas in Week 10 over player usage. But sometimes players need to speak up when they don’t see sensible solutions being presented.
After all, Slayton again is on pace to lead the Giants in receiving yards despite playing with three different quarterbacks this season in Jones, Tyrod Taylor and Tommy DeVito.
Four times in five seasons? Even the quiet, humble Slayton admits he’s proud of that. And he should be.
“Yeah, it’s alright,” he said with a shrug. “I mean, I still have not done yet what I would like to do in this league. But I guess it’s a testament to being able to be productive in a variety of situations. And it’s definitely something I can take pride in.”
