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The New York Giants begin two days of joint practices with the New England Patriots on Wednesday in Foxboro, Mass. Yours truly will be on hand for both days of workouts. Here are some of the things I will be paying attention to.
What will Saquon do?
Head coach Joe Judge has promised that running back Saquon Barkley will do “more than what we saw last week” in joint workouts vs. the Cleveland Browns.
What Barkley did last week was just participate in some individual drills. A logical step might be some 7-on-7 work.
Barkley reportedly won’t be in attendance on Wednesday.
Saquon Barkley will not be at Wednesday's joint practice with Patriots as he attends to a personal matter, per sources. Expected to rejoin #Giants Thursday in Foxboro where plan is get him going in live drills. This isn't expected to set Barkley back. Still possible ready Week 1.
— Jordan Raanan (@JordanRaanan) August 25, 2021
Other injured players
Judge indicated Monday that wide receivers Kenny Golladay and Kadarius Toney weren’t likely to do more than individual drills, if they do that much. No word on whether John Ross will return to practice. There is hope that tight end Kyle Rudolph (foot) will come off the PUP list and begin practicing.
We will also let you know if guys like Nate Solder and Elerson Smith are practice participants.
Situational football
Judge said on Monday that he and Patriots coach Bill Belichick have scripted the workouts to make sure a variety of situations are covered.
“We’re going to have a lot of situational football this week as part of the emphasis going up there and working against New England. This time of the year going into the third game, we’re really making sure that we get the opportunity to go through a lot of situations that otherwise you might not get the opportunity to do in competitive situations because they don’t come up in preseason games,” Judge said. “So, we want to make sure that we go ahead and we go up there as a team and execute and operate and gain the experience of going against a foreign opponent before we get into the regular season.”
Ryan Santoso on display
The Patriots happen to have an uncertain placekicking as neither Nick Folk nor Quinn Nordin have the job locked up. If Santoso has a good week kicking the ball, could the Patriots be a landing spot for the Giants’ spare kicker?
Roster hints
Every time I go through the roster and try to figure out what it might look like when the initial 53 are chosen, I come up with around 42 to 44 spots pretty much locked in. That means there are roughly 10 spots still in play.
I will be watching closely to see how players are deployed, who gets work with the front-line special teams groups, anything that might offer some hints about who will and will not eventually make the roster.
Practice begins both days at 10 a.m. Stay with Big Blue View for full coverage.