Jermaine Eluemunor's injury scare shows just how fragile Giants' O-line construction is
New York Giants guard Jermaine Eluemunor during training camp on Thursday. Credit: Corey Sipkin
Jermaine Eluemunor was able to laugh about it on Thursday. On Wednesday, when he was on his back gasping for air and writhing in pain, it wasn’t so funny.
“I thought I was dead at one point,” the charismatic offensive lineman grinned when recounting how his first training camp practice with his new team came to a scary, screeching halt after a violent collision with defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence. “Not fun. Not fun at all. It’s not the most fun thing I’ve had to deal with.”
As he walked and winced his way back to the Giants locker room immediately following that injury to his ribs, it wasn’t fun for anyone. The Giants were left to wonder if they had already lost one of their key free agency additions before the whistle had even blown to end the first workout.
“You see that, you’re like ‘damn’,” coach Brian Daboll recounted. “But everything checked out OK.”
Eluemunor, who said in his eight years in the NFL he’d never missed a training camp practice, was back on the field Thursday going through some drills but sitting out the team reps, enough, undoubtedly, to keep his perfect attendance streak intact. He expects to be back to full participation in a matter of days.
The incident illustrated two very important lessons that everyone in the organization now understands more fully than before.
The first is that no one should mess around with Lawrence, the Pro Bowler and now violent centerpiece of the team’s defense.
“Anybody Dex hits, you get sore from that,” Daboll quipped of his 350-plus pound mauler.
The second is that despite a strenuous focus on rebuilding, reshaping, rearming and reforming the offensive line this entire offseason, the Giants are still perilously thin within that group. They cannot afford many — or perhaps any — injuries at that position if they are going to be able to function they way they hope to this season.
While the team’s appearance on HBO’s “Hard Knocks” offseason spinoff this summer has captured the drama of a free agency showdown with and ultimate departure of Saquon Barkley, the build-up toward a blockbuster trade for Brian Burns, and the hand-wringing, jet-hopping process of finding potential replacements for quarterback Daniel Jones in the draft before eventually being unwilling to pay the price to move up and select one, the underlying theme general manager Joe Schoen returned to in nearly every episode was his desire to improve the O-line. It was on his mind (and coming out of his mouth) with every deal he made, figuring out how each move would impact the team’s ability to bolster that obvious shortcoming from the previous year.
Eluemunor was and is a big part of that plan. His well-regarded versatility had already come in handy for them as they shuffled him out to right tackle for the start of camp while Evan Neal, still recovering from last year’s ankle injury, began on the physically unable to perform list. That’s how he ended up in Lawrence’s path.
That left Aaron Stinnie playing left guard for the first two practices in the spot where Eluemunor had been lining up all spring (and had spent the six-week break expecting to be). And when Eluemunor left with his injury, it meant Josh Ezeudu had to play right tackle. You remember Ezeudu, right? He’s the player who almost single-handedly scuttled the Giants’ 2023 season allowing the blocked field goal in the opener against the Cowboys and the sack in Miami that sent Jones to the sideline with his neck injury (Jones would return from that malady but tear his ACL in his next game back).
In other words, the Giants were pretty much right back where they were last year. Ugh.
Things were looking slightly better on Thursday with Eluemunor in the wings for a speedy return somewhere. And Newsday reported that Neal should be cleared to return to action very soon, perhaps by the weekend, but his physical status is only half of the team’s predicament with the former seventh overall pick. There are still questions about whether he is up to playing the tackle position in the NFL or destined to be a bust and he’ll have to earn a starting job in this camp.
Meanwhile, a few veteran options such as Justin Pugh who was plugged in admirably a year ago and Long Island’s Greg Von Roten who worked out for the team earlier this week remain options if the Giants decide to go that route. If Neal flops and Eleumunor moves permanently to right tackle, either of those free agents could be signed to play left guard.
“We'll revisit this daily,” Daboll said of the offensive line permutations that will occur throughout the preseason. “But the more you can get the guys playing [the better]. We have a new offensive line coach. Feel good about the guys we have.”
And on Thursday, at least, the Giants were able to feel a little bit better about the important one they almost lost.
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.
