Football
Isaiah Likely spent four NFL seasons doing impressive things in a tiny window, always stuck behind Mark Andrews. PFSN’s Kyle Soppe believes that window is about to blow wide open in New York.
Football Why Isaiah Likely’s Giants Move Sets Up a Breakout
“For me, it’s a guy I’ve got ranked as the No. 1 tight end in the NFC East and the top-10 guy at the position across the entire NFL,” Soppe said on today’s Football Debate Club. “That’s Isaiah Likely coming over from Baltimore to join the Giants.”
The move became official in March, when the Giants signed Likely to a three-year deal worth $40 million and up to $47.5 million, reuniting him with John Harbaugh. In Baltimore, Likely never got the runway. His 2025 season was the worst of his career, 27 catches for 307 yards and one touchdown across 14 games, a stretch that opened with a foot fracture that cost him the first three weeks.
Soppe does not pin that on the player. “We wanted him to get every chance he had with the Ravens. It just never happened,” he said. “They wanted to commit to Mark Andrews. They signed him to an extension.” Baltimore locked Andrews into a three-year deal midway through last season, a clear signal about the pecking order. In New York, there is no pecking order. Likely is the guy.
Harbaugh’s Baltimore offenses lived in two-tight-end sets, and the blueprint in New York looks the same, with Likely effectively operating as a second receiver from a bigger frame. He replaces the departed Wan’Dale Robinson as the chain-mover this offense needs, just at 6-foot-4 and 245 pounds rather than 5-foot-8. That matters most because of who is throwing him the ball.
Football How Jaxson Dart’s Game Funnels Through Isaiah Likely
Dart enters his second season after the Giants traded up to draft him 25th overall in 2025. His rookie year drew real praise, including a fourth-place finish in Offensive Rookie of the Year voting, but it was uneven in a way that plays directly into Likely’s strengths.
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“[Jaxson] Dart was a top 5 quarterback in throwing short of the sticks last season,” Soppe said. “He was a bottom five guy when trying to extend the field, and you’ve got a lot of those field stretchers on the roster now. [Nabers], Slayton, Mooney.”
Read it the way Soppe means it. Malik Nabers, Darius Slayton and Darnell Mooney can win down the field. Likely is the answer underneath and over the middle, the athletic, reliable target a young quarterback leans on when the deep shot is not there. If Dart’s Year 2 leap is about marrying the short game he already owns to the vertical passing he has not, a movable tight end is the connective tissue.
There is a health wrinkle worth watching. Nabers is rehabbing a torn ACL suffered in Week 4 last season, and his Week 1 availability is not guaranteed. If the Giants open without their No. 1 receiver, Likely’s target share only climbs.
“There’s a lot of development that’s going to take place here in this New York offense, and I think it all funnels through Isaiah,” Soppe said.
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That is the bet. A tight end who has flashed for four years, finally handed the volume, in a scheme built by the coach who drafted him, catching passes from a quarterback whose comfort zone is exactly where tight ends eat. Soppe is not hedging on how it ends.
“The chances of him breaking out in 2026,” he said, “I’d call him likely.”
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