NY Giants make ruling on Golden Tate’s status, elevate two from practice squad
The NY Giants finally made a ruling on Golden Tate’s status for Monday night’s game while elevating two members of the practice squad to the roster.
Golden Tate’s status has been very much up in the air all week as the veteran slot receiver has been dealing with a nagging hamstring injury ahead of the NY Giants’ opening game on Monday Night Football tonight.
Initially, it looked like Tate was going to be good to go as the team decided to activate two players from the practice squad that were not wideouts, giving NY Giants fans reason to believe that he would in fact be active.
Giants activate Sean Chandler and Chad Slade from their practice squad for tonight. Take that as a good sign for Golden Tate and a sign that Chandler is up for special teams with Tae Crowder banged up.
— Art Stapleton (@art_stapleton) September 14, 2020
The NFL has instituted this one-year rule that allows teams to promote two members of their practice squad to the active roster on gamedays – making the roster size effectively be 55 total – for this exact reason as the league is anticipating more injuries than normal this year due to the condensed offseason.
For some reason, the NY Giants are not choosing to take advantage of this by having one of their four receivers on the practice squad take Tate’s place as the former Seahawk has been officially ruled out of tonight’s action.
WR Golden Tate (hamstring) will be inactive Monday night vs. Steelers, per source. He was listed as questionable. Need to make sure it’s not something that lingers. There’s another 15 games. Daniel Jones waits yet again to have all his weapons on the field for at least one snap.
— Jordan Raanan (@JordanRaanan) September 14, 2020
To say this is a questionable move would be being kind, as Big Blue will now roll into their first game with only four wideouts, one of them being Damion Ratley who just joined the team after being claimed on waivers less than two weeks ago.
It would have seemed to make sense to elevate either Binjimen Victor or Alex Bachman to the active roster, as Sterling Shepard could have slid inside to play the slot with Victor manning the outside role or just to have Bachman take Tate’s place altogether.
At this point, I would guess the team is going to run many multiple tight end sets, as Kaden Smith now figures to be a major part of the action tonight.
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Big Blue will now have nine active offensive linemen while choosing to go with just four wideouts. It’s entirely possible this has to do with the coaching staff respecting the Steelers’ pass rush as they are likely to have multiple extra blockers on the field all night long.
We’ll see how it works out.