The Giants at 0-4 are one of the most disappointing teams in the NFL. The ambitious spending spree New York went on just one year ago helped it get to the playoffs. Now, all of the sudden, the team is contention for the first overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft.
What went wrong for the Giants, and where do they go from here?
One of the most surprising aspects of the Giants' offseason was their lack of aggressiveness. Since they were aggressive in 2016, they needed to be aggressive again in 2017 in order to maximize their chances in a small window of opportunity.
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Unless a team has Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady, the NFL is all about windows of opportunity. The Giants’ spending spree last year, which included signing Olivier Vernon for $17 million, Janoris Jenkins for $12.5 million and Damon Harrison for $9.5 million, indicated they were trying to open such a window following three years of losing seasons. With the Giants having two promising youngsters in Odell Beckham Jr. and Landon Collins, a few decent offensive linemen nearing the end of their rookie contracts and a 35-year-old Eli Manning, it was more or less the last time they could make such a move before having to sink money into their draft picks and watch Manning fade away.
These windows of opportunity generally last three years at most in the NFL. The big free-agency signings of today are often disappointments three years down the line, as they tend to become big-money items doing little more than eating up cap room.
Some have made the excuse that the Giants’ spending spree of 2016 left them without money, but that isn’t true. They just opted to use it the wrong way.
The Giants in the offseason spent $5.5 million on wide receiver Brandon Marshall, $4.5 million on fullback/tight end Rhett Ellison, $3 million apiece on journeyman guard John Jerry and reclamation project guard DJ Fluker, and $3 million on linebacker Keenan Robinson. That’s $19 million on either bargain players or luxury items like Marshall and Ellison who don’t play very useful positions.
There are a number of ways New York could have made that money work better. It could have bypassed the two guards and Robinson, a six-game starter last year, and signed one of the top available guards. The team could have avoided Marshall, Fluker and Ellison and instead signed a top tackle. Sure, it's a trade-off of one vs. three, but when that one plays a premier position and is a top-level talent at a position of need, it’s a far better use of money.
It's debatable whether those alternate moves would have put the Giants in a hole for 2018. They have about $30 million in cap room projected for next year, and one or two top players would have eaten anywhere from $10 million-$20 million. But when a team has such a small a window, sometimes it needs to take its shots. At worst, the Giants would not have had 2018 as a year for free agency and instead would have focused on who they could re-sign.
Now there's a mess in New York, and the word “rebuild” will creep into the conversation soon if the losing continues.
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Manning will be 37 next year, and his best seasons are behind him. Teams don’t often get chances to find quarterbacks high in the draft, and if the Giants get that opportunity, they have to take it.
Manning is set to count $22.2 million against the salary cap, and the team would create $9.8 million in cap room by releasing or trading him. One option could be to keep him as a mentor — how Kurt Warner was used for Manning, in a sense — but the organization might not like Manning getting booed five or six games into the season while a young QB waits on the bench. Manning wouldn't like it, either.
The Giants can begin the process of tearing it all down if they want. Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Marshall would be the most obvious cuts, as those two would save the team $12 million. All the big signings of 2016 could be released prior to salary guarantees kicking in at the start of free agency. That would cost a big number on the team’s salary cap, but it would create over $12 million in cap room.
That extreme measure would mean a complete rebuild. Would the Giants still have the same GM and coach if they chose to go that route?
New York also must consider a Beckham extension, which would cost around $17 million a season, and it needs to decide whether Justin Push and Weston Richburg are worth keeping. Pugh could be expensive given the nature of recent contracts, and the Giants could be looking at $15 million between the two players.
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This is not the outcome the Giants expected when the 2017 season began, but these are now the questions they face moving forward.
And the questions will only get louder if the Giants continue to lose this season.