{"id":184493,"date":"2024-08-09T10:00:40","date_gmt":"2024-08-09T14:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/?p=184493"},"modified":"2024-08-09T08:42:03","modified_gmt":"2024-08-09T12:42:03","slug":"eric-gray-fantasy-football-sleeper-giants-preseason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2024\/08\/09\/eric-gray-fantasy-football-sleeper-giants-preseason\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Eric Gray A Possible Fantasy Football Sleeper?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thursday kicked off Week 1 of the preseason, and nobody did more to improve their fantasy football stock than Eric Gray. A fifth-round pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, the Oklahoma product hardly played last year behind Saquon Barkley but now has a chance to earn a role in a relatively open backfield. So far, he&#8217;s off to a good start, as the second-year pro finished his season debut with four carries for 52 yards and two touchdowns while adding another four receptions for 46 yards. These types of performances don&#8217;t go unnoticed, but will it be enough for Gray to carve out a role in this new-look offense?<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The Giants Eric Gray made his four rushes count last night with two touchdowns. Here\u2019s his 48 yard sprint to the end zone. <br \/>It\u2019s a beauty of a run. Acceleration through the line of scrimmage and then quickly by the safety while the avoiding a mental error upfront. <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/LXxLDfSake\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/LXxLDfSake<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Geoff Schwartz (@geoffschwartz) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/geoffschwartz\/status\/1821869437781471702?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">August 9, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Will Eric Gray Be A Fantasy Football Sleeper In 2024?<\/h2>\n<p>As shown in the clip above, Eric Gray had a genuinely fantastic performance, but it&#8217;s important to remember that preseason success doesn&#8217;t always translate to fantasy football production. After all, we don&#8217;t need to go too far back to a time when <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2023\/05\/31\/terrace-marshall-carolina-panthers-wr1\/\" target=\"_self\">Terrace Marshall was a breakout candidate<\/a> and <a  href=\"https:\/\/bleacherreport.com\/articles\/10012043-bengals-jamarr-chase-says-nfl-ball-is-harder-to-catch-see-than-ncaa-ball\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ja&#8217;Marr Chase was on a path to the XFL<\/a>. One strong performance won&#8217;t make or break a career, especially when you look deeper into the circumstances surrounding Gray&#8217;s performance.<\/p>\n<p>The Giants rested just about all of their starters, so the fact Gray was even on the field shows he&#8217;s relatively low on the depth chart. This isn&#8217;t surprising, as the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2024\/03\/11\/devin-singletary-signs-contract-new-york-giants\/\" target=\"_self\">Giants signed Devin Singletary to replace Saquon Barkley<\/a>. What is notable, however, is that Gray wasn&#8217;t even the primary backup. <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2024\/04\/23\/tyrone-tracy-jr-2024-nfl-draft-profile\/\" target=\"_self\">Fifth-round pick Tyrone Tracy<\/a> saw most of the snaps with the second-team offense, while Gray primarily played with the third-string unit later in the game. Perhaps Gray did enough to put some pressure on Tracy&#8217;s job, but for the time being, he&#8217;s clearly the RB3 in this committee.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Giants HB snap count by quarter<\/p>\n<p>1st Quarter<br \/>Tyrone Tracy Jr. 17<br \/>Eric Gray 2<\/p>\n<p>2nd Quarter<br \/>Eric Gray 13<\/p>\n<p>Pretty clear who the RB2 is even with Gray putting up some numbers.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Nathan Jahnke (@PFF_NateJahnke) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PFF_NateJahnke\/status\/1821716144048259169?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">August 9, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Additionally, Eric Gray didn&#8217;t look all that good last year, both in real life and fantasy football. While it&#8217;s an admittedly small sample, the running back averaged just 2.8 yards per carry last year and finished with a 57.2 PFF grade, which would have made him the 57th-best running back in the league out of 59 eligible players if he had enough snaps to qualify. Maybe he can turn it around, but he has a long way to go before he&#8217;s ready to do anything for fantasy.<\/p>\n<h3>The Giants Offense<\/h3>\n<p>For the sake of argument, let&#8217;s assume Eric Gray finds a way to win the starting job &#8211; will that be enough to give him fantasy football relevance? The honest answer is probably not. Even with the addition of <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2024\/08\/04\/2024-fantasy-football-profile-malik-nabers\/\" target=\"_self\">first-round pick Malik Nabers<\/a>, this offense should be one of the worst in the league. Andrew Thomas is the only reliable player on the offensive line, and it&#8217;s hard to envision a Daniel Jones-led attack scoring too many touchdowns.<\/p>\n<p>Saquon Barkley is one of the most talented backs in recent memory, and he needed 300 touches just to put up an <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.fantasypros.com\/nfl\/reports\/leaders\/rb.php?year=2023\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">RB13 overall finish<\/a> last year. Even if he wins the starting job, Eric Gray won&#8217;t receive Barkley&#8217;s massive workload, which obviously hinders his fantasy football value. He&#8217;s worth rostering if you have an extra bench spot in your dynasty league, but don&#8217;t waste a redraft pick on him.<\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo: Kevin Wexler &#8211; USA Today Sports<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eric Gray was the biggest winner of the preseason opener, but can the overlooked running back be a fantasy football sleeper in 2024?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2376,"featured_media":184494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[59,20],"tags":[9784,349],"class_list":["post-184493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fantasy","category-giants","tag-eric-gray","tag-fantasy-football-rankings"],"modified_by":"David Latham, Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2376"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}