The New York Giants will play on Monday night without regular right offensive tackle Evan Neal, the NFL team announced on Saturday.
The former Alabama All-American has not practiced with the team since Nov. 3 and will miss his fourth game in a row and sixth of the Giants’ past seven contests because of ankle injuries.
“That’s not something that I can control necessarily,” Neal said this week, “so I don’t really want to harp on it too much. But in life, unexpected things happen, so I’m really just rolling with the punches, controlling everything that I can control so when the opportunity does present itself for me to go back out on the field, I’ll be ready.”
The seventh player picked in the 2022 NFL Draft, Neal entered his second season with expectations of improvement after starting 13 games as a rookie while the Giants posted a 9-7-1 record and went to the playoffs for the first time since 2016.
“Evan got off to a really good camp,” Schoen said during his most recent press conference on Nov. 27. “Had a concussion, missed a couple of weeks, came back and needs to play better. Evan needs to play better. He knows that. Look forward to getting him back here when he’s healthy, but I think he’d admit there’s some things that he can do better, and we look forward to him continuing to improve.”
“I’ve put a lot of dominant reps on tape,” Neal said. “A lot of times, they go unnoticed. A lot of times, the reps that I struggle get highlighted. But if you really sit back and watch the tape, I do a lot of good things. I do a lot of dominant things on the football field that a lot of times go unnoticed, but that’s the nature of being an offensive lineman. You’re not noticed until you mess up, pretty much. You know what I’m saying? So it is what it is.
The Giants have five games left in the regular season, starting with the Green Bay Packers on Monday night. The Philadelphia Eagles, who own the NFL’s best record, are the opponent in two of New York’s final three games, so it would be understandable if the Giants started looking ahead to 2024.
