Dan Salomone
The New York Giants today signed veteran wide receiver and special teamer Gunner Olszewski, who played 10 games for the team in 2023 and spent last season on injured reserve.
He will take the roster spot of Bryce Ford-Wheaton, who suffered a torn Achilles during Sunday's training camp practice and was placed on injured reserve.
It was the second serious injury in three seasons for Ford-Wheaton. He tore his ACL in the final preseason game of 2023 as an undrafted rookie out of West Virginia. The 6-foot-3, 220-pounder rehabbed all the way back to making the 53-man roster last season and played 286 snaps on special teams, the most of any player on offense and third-most on the entire roster.
The biggest one of those plays occurred in Week 5 at Seattle, where Isaiah Simmons blocked Jason Myers' 47-yard field goal attempt that would have tied the game with a minute remaining. Ford-Wheaton picked up the ball and returned it 60 yards for a touchdown.
It was the first time he touched the ball in his NFL career.
In 2023, Olszewski was named NFC Special Teams Player of the Week in the second-to-last game for the Giants last season after his 94-yard punt return touchdown. It was the second longest punt return in Giants history and the longest in 95 years.
The Giants had played 132 regular-season and three postseason games since their previous punt return touchdown. Dwayne Harris scored on an 80-yard return vs. the Jets on Dec. 6, 2015.
The punt return touchdown was the second of Olszewski's career. On Dec. 6, 2020, he scored on a 70-yard runback for the New England Patriots against the Chargers in Los Angeles. In that game, Olszewski returned three punts for 145 yards (48.3-yard avg.), a performance that earned him AFC Special Teams Player of the Week honors. He finished that season with a 17.3-yard punt return average that led the NFL and was the highest in Patriots history. Olszewski was selected first-team All-Pro.
Olszewski originally made the roster in New England as an undrafted rookie out of Bemidji State in 2019.
BUY TICKETS
