Yeah, the outside world doesn’t seem to have any faith that the Giants will be any good.

There are two things really working against the Giants in this game. One is their relatively unknown health. There’s no doubt they have improved their team from last year’s 6-10 squad. They’ll get running back Saquon Barkley back and they added receivers Kenny Golladay and Kadarius Toney, and even tight end Kyle Rudolph, who’ll be a big help if Evan Engram (calf) can’t play.

But all of those players missed all or most of training camp. And while they’ve been trending in the right direction for the last few weeks, they’ve still missed significant chances to work on their timing with quarterback Daniel Jones and to get really integrated into the offense. That could, theoretically, happen fast. But the Giants have been strongly hinting for weeks that their offense might get off to a slow start.

And that’s a problem because … well, the offense is still a problem because of the offensive line. That group did not look good at all this summer. Now left tackle Andrew Thomas is nursing an ankle injury. Left guard Shane Lemieux is still battling a knee injury. And right tackle Matt Peart lost his job to Nate Solder. That’ s not a good formula going into a game against a team with Von Miller and Bradley Chubb.

The Giants defense is good and should hold up just fine against quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, even with his impressive receiving corps (Courtland Sutton, Jerry Jeudy, Tim Patrick). So this game could be all about whether their offense can hold up under pressure and move the ball and score better than they did a year ago when they ranked 31^st in the league.

Popular in the Community