Where a promising summer leaves this Giants roster for Week 1

Some years, finding enough quality players to make the initial 53-man roster is a chore, when after about 45 or 46 or 47 the thinking goes something like this: Do I really need to find a few more guys deserving of making the team from this uninspiring collection?

That has been the case with the Giants far too often in the last decade or so.

This year, when, by 4 p.m. on Aug. 26, the Giants take a carving knife and slice off not quite half of the 90-man squad they carried through training camp, that is not the way it is going to go down.

The belief that they improved their depth came to fruition on the field this summer, as illustrated in the Giants winning their first two preseason games and outscoring the Bills and Jets by a combined 42-21 in the second half. That means the Giants’ backups — many of whom will be fringe roster inclusions or will not make the cut — outplayed their counterparts in those two games. That is a good sign when it comes to assessing how deep the depth chart actually runs.