Evan Engram's weighty expectations: Chiseled Giant setting tone for big 2021
Evan Engram #88 of the New York Giants runs drill during New York Giants OTAÕs at Quest Diagnostics Training Center on May 27, 2021 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Credit: Mike Stobe
It’s the time of year when everyone says he is in the best shape of his career. The nagging bumps and bruises from the previous season have pretty much vanished, the training from the offseason is showing up in the mirror and the excitement about the upcoming season creates dizzying optimism. Running around in shorts and a helmet in OTAs and catching passes without much impediment from a defense no doubt helps inflate that feeling even more.
For Evan Engram, though, the job isn’t done. He actually might be in the best shape of his career as the Giants prepare for the start of their mandatory minicamp this week, but in his mind, there is even more to add to his newly chiseled physique.
"I’ve been grinding with my team back home," he said of his work with trainers at Pinnacle in Atlanta. "I give them credit for how I look right now. Definitely after OTAs, I’m anxious to get down there and get another month in before training camp."
By then, Engram should cut an even more imposing figure on the field. It will be a good way to begin his fifth year with the Giants, the last on his rookie contract, before he potentially hits free agency next March.
But looking like a game-changing tight end has never been a problem for Engram. Since he was drafted by the Giants, he’s always had the potential to wreck defenses and be a matchup headache for opponents. The issue has always been doing it.
That’s what this upcoming season will be all about for him. Putting it all together on the field. Reaching that potential. Not only looking and feeling as if he is in the best shape of his career but having it translate to the best season of his career.
Engram is coming off a 2020 season in which he took some strides in very important areas — he played 16 games for the first time in his career, shedding the label of an injury-prone player that had begun to adhere itself to him — but also fell short in critical others.
He had a number of passes thump off his hands that wound up as interceptions. Perhaps the defining moment of his season, maybe even of the team’s season, was the pass against the Eagles that would have sealed a victory had he caught it.
"There were a lot of things I feel like I could have done better," he said of 2020. "I’m definitely throwing last year away. There were a lot of things to learn from, but I’m looking forward to this next season and improving every day out here."
While some Giants fans have grown weary of waiting for Engram’s skills to fully develop, Joe Judge has made it clear that he is an Engram fan. He extolled the tight end’s work ethic and desire numerous times last season, even when Engram’s foibles were costing the Giants key games, and has resumed his glowing remarks this spring.
"I’m telling you, when you watch us practice and you watch No. 88 on the field, no one empties the tank like this guy," Judge said on Friday. "This guy goes hard every day. Evan is always a guy that makes you say, ‘Hey, Evan, tone it down a little bit.’ He works on the details, takes coaching well, he’s mentally tough and a physically tough dude and takes care of his body . . .
" He’s a fun guy [to have] in a program, he’s a fun guy in the locker room, he’s a leader on our team and he’s a very productive player for us. I enjoy coaching him every single day."
Engram and the rest of the Giants will wrap up their offseason work in New Jersey this coming week. Then he will head back to Atlanta to continue the work he’s been putting into himself and his body since the 2020 season ended.
In late July, he’ll return to the Giants for the start of training camp.
He’ll probably be in the best shape of his career.
Then the work will really begin, translating that status into the most important season of his career.
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.
