New York Giants: Evan Engram battling a crisis of confidence?

With every dropped pass, one cannot help but wonder if New York Giants tight end Evan Engram is battling through a crisis of confidence.

Rookie NFL players are often handed passes, deservedly so, and that was the case with New York Giants tight end Evan Engram following his debut year. Engram, who turned 24 years old before the team’s Week 1 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars last Sunday, was never supposed to be the focal point of the passing attack his first fall in the NFL.

However, injuries to wide receivers Odell Beckham Jr. and Brandon Marshall, and also Sterling Shepard dealing with migraines, led to Engram becoming a favorite target of quarterback Eli Manning.

On paper, Engram’s stats provided promise for his future. He caught 64 of the 115 passes thrown his way featuring for an offense that underwhelmed under former head coach Ben McAdoo, and he found the end zone six times.

His six recorded drops, good for second most in the NFL among tight ends, according to ESPN’s Jordan Raanan, presented concerns though. But the hope was that new coach Pat Shumur, Manning and others within the Giants would help Engram remedy this aspect of his game.

While nobody should overreact after four quarters of football, Engram did little to silence critics versus the Jaguars. Granted, what should have been a 34-yard reception early in the contest was erased thanks to an Ereck Flowers penalty, but he finished the outing with two catches for a paltry 18 yards. After the game, he admitted he left multiple receptions on the turf.

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“I pretty much had three drops,” Engram told reporters, per Paul Schwartz of the New York Post. “I got to be better, not gonna make any excuses, got to find a way to be better in these conditions, find a way to make the big plays.”

Those disheartened by Engram’s blocking display, as it was, when the Giants used him for such situations should remember he wasn’t drafted for those purposes. It’s not a secret he’ll likely never develop into that versatile a tight end. For better or worse, he was selected to serve as a weapon for Manning during the two-time Super Bowl MVP’s final seasons with the franchise.

Engram is no longer a rookie starting for a team trying to get through a disastrous campaign. He is expected to thrive playing alongside a healthy Beckham, who torched the Jaguars throughout Sunday’s game, a healthy Shepard and rookie running back Saquon Barkley, advertised as one of the more electric young playmakers in the league. That can’t happen if Manning doesn’t trust him enough to throw him the ball more than once per quarter.

It’s difficult to find glaring problems with Engram’s technique. He gets open. He’s shown he can get by and go over linebackers and defensive backs. More often than not when dealing with a target who bobbles passes with any regularity, it’s a matter of confidence, or lack thereof, affecting the individual. Only Engram can fix that.

For all of the talent in the lineup, Manning performs better when he has a reliable tight end. Of course Shurmur utilizing a system where the 37-year old throws 15 passes to Beckham, his best player, makes sense, but hoping the receiver continues to trend toward finishing the season with 176 catches is probably unrealistic. If anything, Beckham’s day against Jacksonville should lead to Engram, and others, seeing more-favorable defensive match-ups moving forward.

Anybody who watched the 2017 Giants knew the team needed to upgrade at left tackle. Those high on Barkley believe he can be a once-in-a-generation back, the best of his era and a potential Hall of Fame player. There’s no magic elixir to turn Engram into the next Rob Gronkowski. Any personal battles Engram is having with his hands can only be won by the man, himself.

The good news is Engram may not face a tougher opponent before the end of the regular season. Scoring against the Dallas Cowboys in front of a national audience on Sunday night could do wonders for him. He’s still evolving and improving, and there’s one glaring issue hovering over his reputation he needs to remove, and quickly.