Evan Engram's pregame hamstring injury compounds woes
Giants tight end Evan Engram breaks away on a 54-yard catch-and-run against the Bucs during the fourth quarter at MetLife Stadium on Sunday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Evan Engram’s difficult season became even tougher when he pulled a hamstring during pregame warm-ups Sunday in Philadelphia.
“Same routine, same everything,” the second-year tight end said. “Ran a seam [route] and it just grabbed. Something that had never happened to me before. Just more adversity, I guess.”
Because the injury took place after the Giants had declared their inactive players 90 minutes before kickoff, Engram was active for the game but did not appear in it. There was a chance, he said, that certain situations could pop up for him to play a snap or two, so he stayed limber by running and riding a stationary bike.
With the Giants ahead 19-3, it didn’t seem as if they would need him much. By the time the Eagles came back, it was too late for Engram to play. “Everybody was in the flow of the game and it just wasn’t the smartest idea to be thrown in,” he said.
Engram said he is day-to-day and that the resistance tests he performed with trainers Monday indicated the injury isn’t severe. “I’ve had a worse one before, so I’m able to kind of scale it, but it was definitely a grab,” he said.
The injury is the latest issue that Engram has encountered this season. He missed a month with a knee sprain and has had several key dropped passes. In the two games before Sunday, his snap count diminished.
“I embrace it,” he said of the adversity of 2018. “I definitely wasn’t expecting this much, but that’s life. That’s football. It’s definitely tough, but I was raised to smile in the face of adversity.”
Through all of it, he made two key catches in the fourth quarters of recent wins. Had he played Sunday, he might have made it three in a row.
“To kind of lose like that and not be able to have my hand in or just to help or be out there with my guys,” he said, “it definitely [stinks].”
Notes & quotes: Pat Shurmur said he doesn’t expect but will be on the lookout for signs that players have checked out on this losing season. “Just watch behavior,” he said. “Do your job, be a good teammate, bust your [butt], do what you have to do to help win a game. You don’t guard against it, you coach it back.” . . . The Giants placed rookie return specialist Quadree Henderson on injured reserve with a fractured shoulder and signed rookie TE Garrett Dickerson to the active roster . . . LB B.J. Goodson is “questionable” with a shoulder stinger, Shurmur said.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
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