Kenny Golladay accepts reality of lost season for himself, Giants

When it comes to this awful season, Kenny Golladay seemingly has reached the seventh and final stage of grief: Acceptance. 

"I guess I’m just embracing it, to be honest," the wide receiver said of what has been a frustrating and unproductive first year with the Giants, both for himself and the team. "I can’t go and change anything. It has been a lot of ups and downs. The only thing I can do is keep coming into work."

For two more weeks, that’s what he’ll do. He’ll try to avoid the first season in his life in which he failed to score a touchdown, going all the way back to when he first started playing the sport. He’ll try to add as much as he can to his paltry numbers that have him feeling as ineffective as he was when he came into the league in 2017.

"I probably had a couple more [catches] my rookie year," he said, scoffing at his stats for this season (his 34 catches are a few more than the 28 he had in Detroit in 2017, but he did have three touchdowns that season). "It’s very strange."

And, for the most part, he’ll be doing it as the only healthy wide receiver left in the Giants’ ever-thinning arsenal.

Golladay was the only one on the 53-man active roster able to practice Thursday, flanked in drills — as he well could be in Sunday’s game against the Bears — by practice-squadders Pharoh Cooper, Alex Bachman and David Sills.

First-round pick Kadarius Toney missed a second straight practice with a shoulder injury that could keep him from playing Sunday. Darius Slayton was added to COVID reserve and John Ross, who had cleared the COVID protocols to return to the building, was a non-participant in practice because of a knee injury. Colin Johnson is sidelined by a hamstring injury.

By the way, Mike Glennon and Jake Fromm are the Giants’ quarterbacks.

"Yeah," Golladay sighed after some of those circumstances and numbers were presented to him. There was no rest of the answer. None required.

What must Golladay be thinking when he sees the Rams’ Cooper Kupp with 132 catches for 1,734 yards and 14 touchdowns this season . . . from his old quarterback in Detroit, Matthew Stafford?

Golladay isn’t the only non-productive player in the pitiful passing attack for the Giants. There is a good chance they will not have a single player reach 50 catches this season as tight end Evan Engram currently leads the team with 44. There are 74 players with more than that in the NFL.

It’s nearly inconceivable for any team to have no player with at least 50 receptions in an age in which passing has become the prevalent mode of transportation up and down the field, when rules are so slanted in favor of offenses, and when teams are playing 17 games rather than the 16 that have been the standard for most of the last 4 1⁄2 decades. The last time the Giants didn’t have someone with 50 catches was 1992, when Ed McCaffrey led them with 49.

Now realize that the Giants’ plan last offseason was to surround Daniel Jones with playmakers . . . and that this is the production they are getting from their investments.

As Golladay would say: "Yeah . . . "

The Giants keep trying to find ways to get Golladay more involved in games and keep throwing the ball to him in the end zone.

"Everybody’s trying to improve, and I think Kenny’s done a good job of kind of just staying the course and trying to make the plays that are there to be made," senior offensive assistant and play-caller Freddie Kitchens said. "Kenny competes every day on the field, whether it’s the practice field or the game field. He tries to do the best he can and we’re going to continue to ask that of him and he’s going to continue to give us the best that he can."

For two more games in this forgettable season.

"Frustrated? Of course," Golladay said. "I think anybody would get a little frustrated. But there is a lot that goes on with trying to get receptions and everything. Everybody plays a role in it."

It’s a reality Golladay can do nothing about but embrace.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

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.