Underwhelming debut a dose of reality for Giants LB Kayvon Thibodeaux

Maybe somewhere in Kayvon Thibodeaux’s mind he always envisioned himself swooping onto the field for his NFL debut and tearing opposing offenses apart with his bare hands. In high school and college he was always that type of a dominant playmaker, the kind of game-wrecker who could change the course of contests and who set knees a-knocking among the coaches, linemen and quarterbacks he faced.

None of that happened on Monday night against the Cowboys.

The Giants lost and Thibodeaux, who played 37 snaps coming back from a sprained MCL, managed just one tackle, had no quarterback hits and made very little impact on the game.

He did learn a very important lesson about life in the NFL from that experience, though, one he shared on Thursday.

“You’re not Superman,” he said.

Not in this league. Not yet.

“There are times where you want to be the reason we win, there are times when you want to be the guy, but you have to realize the game isn’t played like that,” the linebacker said. “There are 11 people for a reason. It’s a team sport for a reason. Just making sure you contribute as much as you can to the best of your ability given the circumstances.”

For a player who arrived in New York as the fifth overall pick with the swagger and bravado of a ready-made superstar, such a lackluster first impression could have been difficult to swallow. But humbling as it was, Thibdoeaux has not shown any less confidence in himself than he had prior to the game.

“He doesn’t seem like he’s walking around with his lip out,” defensive coordinator Wink Martindale said. “I think Kayvon is Kayvon. That’s one of the reasons why I love him is because he’s a confident young man, has some ambition to him and has goals and he’s going to go after them. I’d take 11 of guys like that.”

If anything, Monday’s game may spark Thibodeaux even more and awakened him to what he could be dealing with throughout his career.

“I still feel like I can make every play on the field,” he said. “It’s more of an understanding of how the game is played. You are not just going against the other players on the field, you are going against a coordinator, going against a team, going against people who have been and are doing this for a living. It’s understandable that there are schemes and ways to isolate players or take them out or do whatever. It’s me just understanding it’s a lot bigger than it was before and it’s a lot more detailed and there is a lot more time taken within the schemes of offenses.”

There are, in other words, 31 other multi-billion-dollar organizations plotting ways to prevent him from doing the things that this one organization brought him here to do.

There were a few specks of promise in Thibodeaux’s otherwise silent night against the Cowboys. He was able to bat down a pass on one of his outside rushes. He made a nice inside move on the fourth-and-4 play in the fourth quarter that the Cowboys converted, just a step away from being able to put a lick on Cooper Rush.

He also came out of the game with his knee feeling fine.

“Things are kind of getting back to normal,” he said. “As far as my health it was a win being able to go through a whole game and execute.”

Sunday against the Bears he expects to play even more and not be limited to a “pitch count” on his snaps.

“We are definitely going to continue to progress as I progress,” he said.

Potentially as a force in games, too. Thibodeaux may not be Superman this week or at any time in his career, and the Giants certainly want his stat lines to look a little less like Jimmy Olsen’s, but there could be some good that comes from a performance which showed him what he’ll be up against moving forward.

“You better stay humble in this game, period, win or lose, because that’s the way this league is,” Martindale said. “As soon as you lose your humility, the league will come up and slap you right upside the head.”

Thibodeaux might have experienced some of that Monday. Now it’s his turn to slap back.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

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.