Getty New York Giants cornerback Adoree Jackson.
While the prognosis on injured starting cornerback Adoree’ Jackson appears mostly positive, the New York Giants have opted to be a bit proactive in their secondary, reuniting with a familiar face ahead of their preseason finale vs. the New England Patriots.
The Giants have announced they’ve re-signed defensive back Jordyn Peters. The 22-year-old rookie originally spent three weeks with the team prior to being waived on August 13th. An undrafted free agent out of Auburn, Peters initially cracked into the league with Big Blue’s Metlife roommates, the Jets, but was let go in mid-July.
Checking in at 6-foot-1-inches and 200 pounds, Peters lined up at a multitude of positions during his Tigers tenure. While he closed out his Auburn run serving as a safety, he played almost predominantly as a nickel back during his true freshman campaign. With that said, Peters’ true calling card and his best bet of making the roster is special teams. In four collegiate seasons, the Alabama native recorded four blocked kicks and one special teams touchdown.
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Latest Roster Shuffle
The re-addition of Peters brings the Giants roster back to the current 80-man maximum ahead of their tilt with New England. The roster did dip down to 79 players after the team unloaded kicker/punter Ryan Santoso in a trade with the Carolina Panthers earlier this week. In return, the Giants netted a 2022-seventh-round draft pick.
As for Santoso, he looks to have already nailed down the placekicking duties in Carolina, as the Panthers have since released returning starter Joey Slye — leaving Santoso as the lone kicker on their current roster.
In other roster news, defensive back Montre Hartage and tight end Cole Hikutini have reverted to injured reserve after going unclaimed on waivers. Hartage (shoulder) and Hikutini (hip) were recently waived/injured in New York’s effort to trim their roster down to 80 players. Both players have five days to reach a potential injury settlement with the Giants or remain on injured reserve throughout the entirety of the 2021 NFL season (h/t Giants Wire). The team has been rather trigger-happy with injury settlements this offseason, reaching four such agreements just this month (Clayton Thorson, Jarren Williams, Mike Weber and Derrick Dillon).
The Race to 53
The Giants, like the other 31 NFL teams, have until 4:00 p.m. ET on Tuesday (August 31st) to cut their roster down to 53 players. For Peters and other bubble-type players, there’s still a chance to stake claim to a spot, as head coach Joe Judge noted to reporters:
There’s a number of positions that are still up for grabs. As we go into every game, every season, the best players will play, so whoever is practicing better will get the nod that week and in the game. In terms of the majority of the team at this point, we have a pretty clear picture on a lot of positions. We’ve had a number of exposures to these guys, whether it’s preseason games, whether it’s competitive practices, whether it’s practices here, training camp, as well as our knowledge of some things they’ve done for us in the past, here or elsewhere. But you know, they got to go out there and they’ve got to play and they’ve got to play with consistency. So, there is a clear picture for the majority of the roster, but there’s still a lot of positions that are up for grabs.
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