Giants’ safety Landon Collins makes PFF’s most-improved list

If you watched the New York Giants play throughout the 2016 season you probably don’t need Big Blue View, fancy-schmancy statistics, or Pro Football Focus to tell you that All-Pro safety Landon Collins was the team’s most improved player.

We are, however, going to tell you, anyway.

Pro Football Focus, via ESPN Insider, has put together a list of the most improved players around the NFL in a variety of categories. Collins made the list twice.

Most improved second-year defender:

As a rookie, Collins played 56.0 percent of his snaps lined up deep in the secondary as a free safety, and it was ugly. But in his second season, he was there on 36.7 percent of his snaps, and he was used far more as a box weapon. His 46 defensive stops are eight more than the next-best safety, and he either picked off or broke up 10 passes.

Most improved hybrid defender:

No player in the league made the improvement from his rookie season to his second year the way Collins did. His missed tackles dropped from 15 to 12, while his tackles resulting in a defensive stop climbed from 32 to 46, all of which contributed to his PFF rating rising from 58.0 to 92.1.

Giants coach Ben McAdoo said this week that he is looking for improvement next season from members of the team’s 2016 draft class. Can any of them make the kind of leap Collins did?