Ben McAdoo believes preseason has no correlation to regular season

Ben McAdoo does not believe that the preseason has any correlation to what happens in the regular season.

“It’s a different game,” he said of the four exhibitions. “The games are played for different reasons. You’re trying to evaluate your team, evaluate the players on your team.”

Success and failure, even from the projected starters he said, are almost meaningless.

“You want to get players work versus competitive players,” he said. “You want to get your ones work versus other opponents’ ones. Get them good, quality work at high speeds and physicality.”

Of course, by the fourth preseason game, that objective changes too. Not all of the Giants starters will be playing Thursday night against the Patriots, including Eli Manning, and the Patriots rarely play their starters against the Giants when they meet in these circumstances. So what is the new goal for this game?

“We want to give every player who’s on the bubble an opportunity to show what they can do,” McAdoo said.

There are a lot more of them this year because rules regarding cutdowns have changed. Teams used to go from 90 players to 75 after three preseason games before landing at 53. Now, for the first time, they will go directly from 90 to 53 this weekend.

“I do like going from 90 to 53,” McAdoo said. “I think it gives the players who are out there doing a lot of work, getting a lot of work, it gives them an opportunity to show well for your team and for other teams in the league.”

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.