Zombie Giants: Keelan Doss, Josh Rivas contribute after murky roster statuses
Giants wide receiver Keelan Doss (5) makes a one handed catch against Cincinnati Bengals cornerback Allan George (42) during the third quarter of a preseason game at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, on Sunday, Aug 21, 2022. Credit: Brad Penner
When Keelan Doss was cut by the Giants on Friday morning there were two choices for flights home to California, 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Taking the earlier one would have required some rushing so instead he opted for the later. It may have saved his career… or at least temporarily prolonged it by a bit.
Shortly after Doss left the team facility with the bad news he got a call back asking him to return. Fellow wide receiver Robert Forster had pulled a hamstring in the practice Doss wasn’t at and the Giants needed bodies for the upcoming preseason game against the Bengals. So Doss, who had only gotten as far as the team hotel where he was packing his things and getting ready to check out, hopped back on a shuttle and returned to the team’s headquarters.
“Yeah, that was a long day,” Doss sighed in the postgame locker room on Sunday night. “It was wild.”
Had he gotten on that 11 a.m. flight he would have been somewhere over the middle of the country when the Giants needed to reach him and they might have gone in another direction. Instead he was able to play against the Bengals and wound up with three catches for 34 yards and a key third-down conversion.
“It just kind of all worked out and then I had the opportunity to come out here and make a couple of plays,” Doss said. “Right back to it.”
Doss wasn’t the only Giants player to have a strange few days of roster status leading up to the Bengals game. Offensive lineman Josh Rivas was waived last Sunday but when his position group was hit with a spate of injuries the Giants brought him back to re-sign him. Unlike Doss, Rivas had left the area and gone home to Kansas before flying back to New Jersey on Thursday night. Ironically it was the injuries to the offensive line and the return of Rivas that triggered the plan to cut Doss to make room for reinforcements up front.
Rivas and Doss both played nearly the entire second half of Sunday’s game, Rivas putting in 36 snaps at left guard with Doss taking 34 snaps at receiver.
For one night, at least, Doss and Rivas were zombie Giants.
“Back from the dead, man,” Doss said.
While Doss was never technically waived (he was only told he was going to be but the paperwork was never officially filed), the experience did make Doss aware of the precarious spot he holds on the roster with the big trim to 53 players coming in about a week. He is the last man on the team as it currently stands.
“It’s just the nature of the business,” said Doss, a four-year veteran who has been on the offseason or practice squad rosters of the Raiders, Jaguars, Falcons and Jets but played in just nine regular season games (all for the Raiders). “I’ve been through it before. You have to be a pro about it… I’m like, if they want to cut me again, hey, I’ve already been cut, so I just go out there and play physically because there is nothing really to lose. We’ll see what happens again this week.”
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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