At least one prominent analytics website isn’t a huge fan of the New York Giants first-round pick, calling the selection of a tight end one of the most likely busts of the NFL draft.
Evan Engram is a fascinating pick for the Giants, who took the Ole Miss product No. 23 overall in last week’s draft. He is a tremendous athlete who tested off the charts at the NFL combine and had the kind of production in the SEC that makes for a first round pick. He’s a threat as a receiver and a nightmare matchup.
Those are all good things, by the way.
But he isn’t an offensive tackle, which the Giants still sorely needed after failing to take an offensive lineman until the sixth round.
He also isn’t a very good blocker, which Mike Renner of Pro Football Focus and the Washington Post writes in a scathing assessment.
Terms such as “tweener” and an analysis of his tape from Ole Miss yields that Engram was “a liability as a run-blocker.”
Yikes.
“The Giants’ heavy reliance on 11-personnel (one back, one tight end and three receivers) basically demands an in-line tight end to have any threat of the run. If New York expects people to fear their rushing attack with Engram lined up on the end of the line, the Giants could be in for a rude awakening.
That means Engram is essentially a slot receiver in the NFL, and the Giants already have a pretty good one there in second-year man Sterling Shepard.
On the list by Renner, Engram is listed as the No. 4 player with “Really Big Bust Potential.”
