Abdul Carter can give the Giants an edge in more ways than one. That's what makes him special.

The third overall draft pick had a share of a sack in his NFL debut, something it took Michael Strahan, the franchise's all-time sacks leader, four weeks to do at the start of his career.

It was part of a three-tackle performance for Carter, who also pressured Jayden Daniels to throw the ball away at the Giants' goal line for an intentional grounding penalty. That play led to the end of the first half without Washington adding more points.

But it was his punt block prowess that caught some headlines. After getting close to a block earlier in the game, Carter rushed off the right edge early in the third quarter and the 6-foot-3, 252-pound outside linebacker stretched out his right hand to partially block the punt of the left-footed Tress Way.

"I'll start off by saying I'm glad he's on our team," Michael Ghobrial said this week.

The special teams coordinator did not say how much he had to politick to get the Unanimous All-American on one of his units. But he was able to use his skills for five special teams snaps, which amounted to 21.7 percent of the total for that phase of the game in Week 1.

"The thing with him is I think his superpower obviously is his ability to go and get the ball," Ghobrial said. "Whether that be a quarterback or whether that be the punter punting it. He is a special athlete. He was a former receiver. He does a good job in coverage. He does a good job in staying in phase with people if he was going to hold somebody up. He has that versatility.

"Again, the cool thing about him is you can ask him to do a lot, and the athletic traits show up in whatever you ask him to do. His versatility to me is very valuable on that unit because he has to be able to do everything that we're asking the other guys to do. Just one of those seems to stand out a little bit more, but he does have the ability to do everything."

Carter isn't relying on his raw talent alone when it comes to special teams or defense.

"I think above all that, I believe above all that, he truly wants to do it," Ghobrial said. "He is a student of the game and wants to continue to study. We'll always take a commonsense approach depending on volume, depending on week to week, whether we can see him doing it or not. He definitely has a skill set to do it and it was cool to see him have success pretty early on in his career."

And that success is no accident.

"In this league, there's a lot of skilled football players," Ghobrial said. "Abdul, we believe, is truly skilled. You can't get away with skill alone. There is a preparation process that requires these players to be able to play fast. That is practice habits, that's in the meeting room, that's in the playbook. Abdul embodies all those things. He takes all those to heart because he knows all those contribute to his ability to have success on that unit."

While still impactful, the Giants did not make Carter their highest-drafted defender since Carl Banks to play special teams. Carter played 38 defensive snaps while rotating with Brian Burns and Kayvon Thibodeaux.

"I think that's something that's going to evolve as we go here," defensive coordinator Shane Bowen said. "Again, the first game for all those guys. A lot of factors going into that game with [Washington's] offense, the tempo, different schemes, everything that comes into play with that. I think the tempo kind of handcuffs you a little bit with how much control we potentially have over that at times.

"But I think each week it's something we're going to look at just ways situationally that fit that we're able to hopefully utilize those three guys, whether it's together, separately, but continue to evolve as we go. We'll see where that goes. It might be totally different this week just in terms of count and where it stands. I think it's week to week with that. I was pleased with Abdul with what he did when he was in there. I think he was effective. You felt him out there. And same with Burns and KT. I thought both those guys did some good things."

Carter's role could also be affected by the loss of Micah McFadden, who was placed on injured reserve after suffering a foot injury in the opener. Darius Muasau is the next man up, but Carter has experience playing off the ball in college.

"That's a good question," Bowen said. "Got a lot of confidence Moose (Muasau). He went in there and I thought he did a good job last week, for the most part. He's done really well last year when he played for us, and then throughout training camp this preseason. But yeah, Abdul's got the history of playing off the ball, so that's something we've got to consider, got to look at. Another way, as you've said, to potentially get all three of those guys on the field. I think all those guys have versatility to do some different things for us that we've got to continue to explore. By game plan, what we're seeing, first, second down versus third down. What are those situations on third down? All that stuff kind of comes into play."