The New York Giants believe they have their franchise quarterback in Daniel Jones but that has precluded them from stacking the quarterback room with bodies.
This past week, the Giants claimed former Dallas Cowboys backup Cooper Rush off waivers, giving them a total of five quarterbacks on their 90-man roster.
Rush played under Giants offensive coordinator Jason Garrett in Dallas the last few seasons and is familiar with what Garrett will be trying to install here with the Giants.
“Like everyone else in the league, we are looking at the waiver wire every day. We are always trying to acquire good football players for our team,” said head coach Joe Judge. “The competition in training camp will sort a lot of things out. When we see a good player out there and we think he is someone that can be an asset to our team and come in here and compete, that’s all we’re considering. He was someone that came across the waiver wire that we had known about and some had experience with him. We thought it would be a positive move for our team.”
Rush’s arrival gives the Giants five quarterbacks, which is unusually high for a team that has its franchise quarterback plan in place. Besides Jones and Rush, who signed a one-year deal worth a potential $1.25 million last week, the team has Colt McCoy, Alex Tanney and rookie Case Cookus in house.
Judge was asked on a conference call on Tuesday if he felt he could carry five quarterbacks on the roster right now.
“You definitely can. You can have 90 quarterbacks right now because you don’t have to worry about throwing to anybody,” he said. “In terms of going to camp right now, we’ll address that as we get closer to camp in terms of all the positions. We obviously have a template like everybody else has of the desired numbers at each position. I think the overriding factor is you don’t want to turn away a good player just to suit the numbers. You kind of structure practice accordingly to make sure there is as many good players on your roster as possibly could be.”
The Giants are ramping up the competition at all positions, so why shouldn’t they do that at quarterback? The addition of Rush, McCoy and Cookus, who the Giants signed after the draft and was on many experts’ draft “sleeper” lists, should make for an interesting camp.
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