Roster Depth: Are the Giants good enough at backup QB?

How do you determine how much depth your favorite team's roster has? Veteran NFL analyst Pat Kirwan has come up with a 13-point checklist of things teams should be striving to have in reserve. One of those is a quality backup quarterback, and today we will look at how Kirwan defines a quality backup quarterback and see if the New York Giants have one.

Kirwan defines a quality backup quarterback like this:

"A capable backup QB that can go at least 2-2 in a four-game stretch qualifies as a good backup."

For the sake of argument, let's pick what might be the most brutal stretch of the 2014 schedule for the Giants. That would be weeks 9-12 when they host the Indianapolis Colts on Monday, travel to face the Seattle Seahawks six days later, then host the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys the two weeks after that.

Should Eli Manning be sidelined, would you be comfortable that either Ryan Nassib or Curtis Painter could guide the Giants to at least two wins in those four games?

The Giants, as we have written previously, are giving Nassib every chance to win the No. 2 quarterback job. He took far more reps than Painter during OTAs and mini-camp, to largely mixed results. Can he gain the confidence of the Giants' coaching staff during the preseason?

Painter has been in and out of the league since 2009, and has played in 14 games with the Giants and Indianapolis Colts. He lost the only eight starts of his career, all with the woeful 2-14 Colts in 2011.

We will look at the other 12 categories on Kirwan's list in a future post. For now, give us your thoughts on the backup quarterback situation. Are the Giants one of the 16 teams Kirwan believes has a capable backup, or are they one of the 16 teams that needs to hold their breath and hope nothing happens to the starter?