NY Giants’ offensive weapon group given heavy respect by ESPN

While things are far from blissful in the land of the NY Giants, one silver lining is that Bill Barnwell of ESPN believes Big Blue has one of the handfuls of best offensive weapon groups in the entire NFL.

This is especially noteworthy because Bill Barnell, a respected ESPN NFL analyst, has been especially tough on the NY Giants during the Dave Gettleman era — and for good reason in my opinion.

While he’s mainly been harsh on the way Gettleman has chosen to use his assets in relation to positional value, he was fair enough to even give the NY Giants a high ranking of #8 when it came to offensive weapons in 2019.

After evaluating Big Blue’s season last year, he’s now bumped the Giants up to #7 in the league which surely has to be considered elite status.

In his piece ranking all 32 team’s offensive weaponry, he cites interesting and, in my opinion, factual reasons why the squad deserves to be ranked so highly even though the offense didn’t come near cracking the top ten overall in 2019 (18th in points, 23rd in total yards).

Via ESPN:

"If everyone could just get on the field at one time, the Giants would be something to stress out about for opposing defenses. Daniel Jones wasn’t able to get his five key weapons — Saquon Barkley, Evan Engram, Golden Tate, Sterling Shepard and Darius Slayton — on the gridiron together for a single snap in 2019. Jones dropped back 77 times with only Shepard missing from that bunch and posted a passer rating of 100.7, 13 points higher than his season-long total."

Barnwell is right on the money here as the NY Giants’ skill-position group was decimated by injuries in 2019 and got off on the wrong foot right away when “prized offseason acquisition”, Golden Tate, tested positive for PED’s before ever even suiting up for Big Blue.

While I still believe the unit is lacking a big-bodied wideout in the worst way, the combination of new offensive coordinator Jason Garrett and stud second-year QB Daniel Jones should only help in the team’s efforts to become one of the best offenses in the league.

The ESPN reporter goes on to opine that Darius Slayton is the main reason to be so excited about the group’s prospects, as he was truly a revelation for the team in a lost season.

Although Barnwell is firmly in the ‘runningbacks are replaceable camp’, Saquon Barkley’s elite talent surely has a lot to do with the high ranking as his other-worldly talent is simply too evident to deny.

In a nutshell, as long as the NY Giants’ offensive weapons are able to stay relatively healthy (especially Evan Engram, who has the ability to truly open up this offense), Big Blue’s offense should be able to put up plenty of points in 2020 behind the new coaching regime taking a new approach to using its talent, and I myself would be shocked if the team finished outside the top ten in total offense and points scored.

That would be major progress which is really what all NY Giants fans should be looking for in what should be another rebuilding year barring a miracle.