The Giants assistant coach with the biggest challenge in 2026

New York Giants head coach John Harbaugh wasted no time in putting together a solid assistant coaching staff in which every key member has prior NFL coaching experience.

And while every single member of that staff is being counted on to bring out the best in their respective position groups, there is one particular assistant coach who is not a coordinator, for whom a case could be made that he has more pressure than anyone to deliver glowing results in 2026.

That would be defensive backs coach Addison Lynch. An eight-year NFL coaching veteran, Lynch comes to the Giants after three seasons with the Denver Broncos, where he was a defensive quality control coach for the 2023 and 2024 seasons before being promoted to coaching the cornerbacks in 2025.

Lynch is tasked with not only helping to oversee the competition for the lone starting job that’s clearly up for grabs (the second cornerback spot), but he’s also tasked with getting the overall group consisting of both veterans and young players to up their level of play from a year ago.

Per Pro Football Focus, Paulson Adebo, signed to be the team’s top cornerback during the 2025 offseason, ranked 40th among 51 qualifying cornerbacks who played a minimum of 450 defensive snaps last year, Adebo having only recorded five pass breakups and seven forced incompletions in 464 coverage snaps for a 92.0 overall coverage rating.

Besides Adebo, whom one could argue was still rounding back into shape from the broken leg he suffered the season prior to joining Big Blue, the rest of the Giants defensive backs room vastly underperformed last year.

Slot cornerback Dru Phillips took a step backward from his rookie season, most of that due to a surge in his penalties related to grabbiness he developed in coverage.

Also taking a step backward was safety Tyler Nubin, who saw a surge in missed tackles (15, up from 10 in his rookie season) and, with it, a significant change in his coverage rating, which went from 95.7 in his rookie season to 119.5 last year.

Then there are the reclamation projects such as 2023 first-round draft pick Deonte Banks, who, after sharing reps with Cor’Dale Flott as the CB2, eventually was removed from the defense save for the occasional spot duty or fill-in reps when someone was injured, and the struggles of Korie Black, a seventh-round draft pick in 2025.

"It’s All About Building Trust"

The good news for Lynch and the players is that the scheme implemented by new defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson appears to be a much better fit for the strengths and talents of the defensive backs.

Wilson’s scheme leans more heavily into press-man coverage and simulated pressures that will see the defensive backs playing a lot closer to the action as opposed to the zone-heavy scheme run by former defensive coordinator Shane Bowen, which often had the cornerbacks in particular playing in the next zip code, thereby leaving way too much room for error.

But while the scheme is one very big piece of the puzzle, execution is another, which is where Lynch comes in.

In the case of Banks, for example, while he has the natural talents to be a successful NFL cornerback, he has fallen short in confidence, which was magnified when he was asked to do things that weren’t as natural a fit for his strengths.  

Lynch told reporters last month that the overall theme with the defensive backs is consistency.

“We just need to be consistent with our techniques, consistent with our alignments, where our eyes are, and then not overcomplicate this game,” he said.

“The game's already hard enough, so for us to throw more complication on it is crazy. Make it simple for those guys so they can play fast and those skills that Mama and Daddy gave and show up.”

To ensure that happens, Lynch is ready to give the players everything he has, particularly to those like Banks whose struggles are without question one of the more disappointing developments to come from the 2023 draft class.

“I want to have a good relationship because relationships make him be able to trust me,” Lynch said.

“And if he can trust me, he's gonna do what I say more often. So right now we've built the trust, and he's being consistent in his technique.”

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This article was originally published on www.si.com/nfl/giants/onsi as The Giants Assistant Coach With the Biggest Challenge in 2026 .