Giants place Elerson Smith, John Ross on IR; C.J. Board, Casey Kreiter are back

Roster manipulation continues as Giants fine-tune their 53-man roster

The New York Giants continued to shuffle their roster Wednesday evening. The Giants placed rookie edge defender Elerson Smith and wide receiver John Ross on injured reserve, and re-signed wide receiver C.J. Board and long snapper Casey Kreiter.

Smith, the team’s fourth-round pick out of Northern Iowa, had barely practiced all summer after suffering a hamstring injury. Ross, a veteran wide receiver signed as a free agent, has not practiced over the past two or three weeks with a hamstring injury of his own.

Both players will be eligible to return to the 53-man roster after missing three games.

Board was cut earlier in the day and then re-signed in a bit of roster manipulation. Kreiter, the team’s long-snapper last season, was cut when the initial 53-man roster was set on Tuesday. The expectation was that he would quickly be re-signed, and that has taken place.

Coach Joe Judge spoke on Wednesday about the roster shuffling.

“There’s a lot of roster movement. There’s guys that we’re going to have on our roster on day one that we didn’t go through training camp with. That’s just a natural part of the National Football League,” Judge said. “It’ll be a part of the process of us really identifying what we’re doing well, things we have to overcome and keep improving as we go through it. To me, you’re never a final product to begin with, especially not early in the year.”