CINCINNATI – There is an old saying around NFL teams that you cannot make the club from the tub. The roster survival rate for players that spend more time getting treatment and watching practice from the sideline is not high. Established veterans get cut some slack. Young and unproven players do not.

This is the sticky situation Sam Beal finds himself in.

Time is not on the side of the 22-year-old cornerback. He has been sidelined most of the summer with groin and hamstring issues that kept him out of the first two preseason games and prevented him from playing in preseason game No. 3, Thursday night against the Bengals at Paul Brown Stadium.

Beal, taken out of Western Michigan in the third round of last year’s supplemental draft, missed his entire rookie year with a shoulder injury. The Giants are greatly intrigued by his potential, but Beal has not been on the field enough to make an impression, and that leads to roster uncertainty.

“Yeah, you’re right,” coach Pat Shurmur said. “We’re just going to have to see where he is physically. We drafted him for a reason. We would like to see him be on our team. We’ll just see where he’s at, and then we’ll make a decision.

“He’s getting healthier by the day. It’s just unfortunate that we haven’t been able to see him do much. But unfortunately, that’s the way it is sometimes.”

It is not likely that the Giants would give up on Beal — he cost them their third-round pick in the 2019 draft — but he is making it difficult to make a case for himself. Beal has the desired size (6-foot-1) and speed and his limited work showed he can move and plaster to wide receivers.

Coaches need to see how young players operate in games, though, and Beal remains a mystery.

Early in training camp, with Beal already missing time, Shurmur sounded a more patient tune, knowing there was plenty of time left in the summer to get a look at Beal.

“Certainly, it’s always better to practice than not,” Shurmur said a few weeks ago. “His challenge is to get himself healthy so that he can get back out there. It’s unfortunate that he’s missing time, but when he gets back out there, he’ll just have to catch up quickly.”

Beal has not gotten back out there. There was optimism he would return in some capacity this week. But he did not, and the waiting game continues.

There is a crowd at cornerback, mostly made up of young players looking to make a mark in the NFL. Janoris Jenkins is the only established veteran and a rookie, first-round pick DeAndre Baker, will start alongside Jenkins. Baker missed time with a strained knee but he is on the mend and has already participated in individual drills.

The Giants wanted Beal to compete with Baker for a starting job and also for the nickel back spot, which is a key role. Grant Haley, entering his second NFL season, looks as if he will win the nickel back job, with rookie Julian Love sliding back to play free safety. Another rookie, sixth-round pick Corey Ballentine, factors in because of a strong showing this summer. Antonio Hamilton earned a place on the roster last season based on his work on special teams.

Youth and inexperience abound.

“I don’t know if it’s difficult,” defensive backs coach Everett Withers said. “There are some challenges because you have so much youth, but I also believe it’s a clean slate, too, so what they learn, they learn together as a new group. They’re not bringing a whole bunch of things in from other places, so they learn together as a new group and I think that has some benefit to it.”

Withers stressed the need to see the young players as often as possible in as many situations as possible that simulate game action.

“I think more of what you do is get as much live action as you can out here,” Withers said. “Put as much pressure on them out here as possible as far as making plays in more situations, understanding down and distance, and putting them in as many of those situations as you can right now.”

There is always room for more, as no team can ever have too many cornerbacks. Beal is expected to be granted a reprieve when it is time to figure out who stays and who goes, as the Giants wait to see what they have got with him.