Big Blue View
Joe Schoen’s belief in positional value on display at this position
The New York Giants’ personnel decisions at safety have certainly engendered controversy in the fan base. Has GM Joe Schoen been right or wrong in how he has approached the position?
Current roster: Jason Pinnock, Tyler Nubin, Dane Belton, Anthony Johnson
Players drafted since 2022: Dane Belton (Round 4, No. 114, 2022) | Gervarrius Owens (Round 7, No. 254, 2023) | Tyler Nubin (Round 2, No. 47, 2024)
Biggest free agent signing: Jason Pinnock (2022 waiver claim)
Biggest losses: Xavier McKinney, Julian Love
The Giants lost Julian Love to the Seattle Seahawks in free agency before the 2023 season. It wasn’t because they didn’t try to keep him.
Love was a full-time starter for the Giants for the first time in four years in 2022, and played extremely well. He signed a two-year, $12 million deal with Seattle. Reporting from The Athletic indicated that the Giants offered love more than that during the 2022 season bye week. Love, thinking he would be able to find an even more lucrative offer in free agency, turned it down.
When the Seahawks made their offer to Love, the Giants — walking a tight financial line as they tried to recover from a salary cap mess — couldn’t match. They had already allocated that money to wide receiver Darius Slayton.
Schoen and the Giants made a conscious decision not to get into a bidding war for Xavier McKinney. If you watched ‘Hard Knocks’ you know that Schoen, a positional value disciple, was shocked that the Green Bay Packers gave McKinney $67.5 million over four years, with the average annual value at $16.75 million. That made McKinney the game’s fourth-highest paid safety.
Credit the Giants’ pro personnel department with identifying a mistake made by the New York Jets when they tried to pass Jason Pinnock through waivers to their practice squad in 2022. The Giants claimed him, and Pinnock — while not quite as good this season as he was in 2023 — has filled the spot vacated by Love.
The Giants drafted 23-year-old Tyler Nubin in Round 2 to replace the 26-year-old McKinney. Called the ‘alpha of alphas” by assistant GM Brandon Brown, it is easy to see why the Giants liked Nubin coming out of Minnesota. He has played 99% of the defensive snaps. Get around him and the leadership traits that will see him grow into a core defensive player, if he isn’t already, are apparent. The ball-hawking skills that saw him intercept 13 passes as a collegian haven’t shown up yet in the NFL, but there is a lot to like.
McKinney, because he already has a career-high six interceptions, is making the Giants look bad for not trying harder to retain him.
The view here, though, is that McKinney’s career shows that what he is doing is not sustainable. A 2020 second-round pick by the Giants,...
