Giants rookie to watch: WR Jalin Hyatt
Giants rookie wide receiver Jalin Hyatt had five catches for 31 yards and a touchdown in three preseason games in 2023. Credit: James Escher
Jalin Hyatt, WR
Who else? Forget concerns about the route tree. The Giants absolutely, positively love Hyatt, and why shouldn’t they? He has speed to spare in a league where that quality can be the defining quality. Catch him if you can. He’s won over veterans with his desire to learn and his willingness to accept corrections. He has done everything asked of him by wide receivers coach Mike Groh. In the preseason game against the Panthers, Hyatt faked the post and got behind veteran safety Eric Rowe on a corner route. Touchdown. At this point, it’s fair to wonder why he was there for the Giants in the third round of the draft.
Giants assistant general manager Brandon Brown recently shed light on that idea, suggesting that Hyatt was limited in what he was asked to do at the University of Tennessee. (There has to be some reason that he was the 10th receiver taken in the 2023 draft. Tenth!)
Said Brown: “I think with Jalin, it’s (about) knowing what their system called for (from him). Because what he's doing for us, he has more talent in his body than the role he was asked to play at Tennessee.”
Kimberly Jones covers the Giants for Newsday, a beat she first worked in the early 2000s before joining the YES Network to cover the Yankees. She worked for the NFL Network for more than a decade and has been heard semi-regularly on WFAN.
