Following Ereck Flowers: Your reaction and my observations of the Giants' left tackle

EAST RUTHERFORD — I did not video every snap taken by Ereck Flowers in team drills during practice Tuesday to bury him, nor to praise him.

No player on the Giants is facing more scrutiny heading into this season than their starting left tackle. Seemingly everyone has criticism for Flowers, opinions on what he can and can't do, and how his presence on Eli Manning's blind side will be significant in the Giants' quest to win the NFC East, return to the playoffs and make a run at Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis in six months.

Instead of offering my immediate take on what I saw from Flowers in practice, I decided to approach the situation from a different angle.

Capture every team snap that included Flowers – that turned out to be every one that included Manning and others on the first-team offense, by the way – and let the fans judge for themselves.

The reaction was remarkable, running the gamut from "not too bad" to "cut him, he'll never be any good."

Of course, the Giants believe the reality with Flowers, whom they drafted 9th overall in 2015, will be better than what it was last season.

Here are some factors to consider when you are gauging Flowers' progress from play to play in August. And again, this is not a defense of the 23-year-old lineman; you'd be hard pressed to find someone to say he does not need to be drastically improved in 2017 and beyond.

These are my observations of where Flowers is right now and some factors that, although they may sound like excuses for the entire offensive line, are certainly reasonable enough to play a part in the evaluation prior to making a final verdict.

Keep in mind: all of you watched the same video from Tuesday's practice and the conclusions made were incredibly varied.

Sweat the technique

Flowers' bend against the speed rush appears to be the biggest lingering issue in his growth as a player. His hands are quicker, but in pass sets against Olivier Vernon and Jason Pierre-Paul, when Flowers loses the edge to the outside, he has difficulty regaining his technique, which could continue to lead to trouble for him in terms of penalties.

His power is still evident in the run game.

These are things Flowers is working on in practice. The Giants believe he is not a finished product, and the challenge remains: show improvement in the parts of your game that have been the weakest. He's not there yet. No one knows if he will get there. This is a leap of faith, and many within the Giants' organization believe Flowers has accepted that challenge, which is the first step.

Element of surprise

Flowers is still a work in progress, which is cause for some panic considering his status as the 9th overall draft pick in 2015. But in speaking with some of his teammates, they believe it's unfair to judge Flowers' maturation as a player by a handful of practice snaps. This is the time where he needs to be make mistakes in order to correct them.

Also, consider this: there is no element of surprise both in practice and early on in the preseason, which puts the offensive line at a distinct disadvantage. The defense knows when they're going to run the ball and when they're going to pass based on the drill.

And the Giants are not going to send help for one of their tackles in practice. That's supposed to be a strength of tight end Rhett Ellison and will be on game day, not necessarily in practice.

That's not how they push themselves to get better, or see how weak they are in certain spots.

Talent of the competition

Vernon and Pierre-Paul are among the league's most complete defensive ends. When they do well against Flowers, they are supposed to do well against him.

Flowers struggled against Vernon in particular in back-to-back practices following the Giants' preseason opener against the Steelers, in which he was solid despite negative social media reaction to his performance.

When asked about Flowers' performance on Monday, Giants coach Ben McAdoo quipped: "I thought Olivier Vernon came out with his A-game yesterday and I thought he had some great reps versus a lot of players yesterday. ... I think Ereck did some good things at practice [Monday], too. It wasn’t all one-sided."

At the end of the day, the Giants are going to support Flowers as he works through what they hope are growing pains. He's on an island and there will be nowhere to hide against the NFL's best - one of whom in Vernon he sees every day in practice.

There is value in waiting until the Giants take the field Sept. 10 for the season opener against the Cowboys before rendering a final verdict on Flowers' progression from Year 2 to Year 3.

Make no mistake: Flowers needs to play better than he did last season. He also has roughly another month to get to where he needs to be before the verdict on his improvement will be rendered in a game that counts.