Big Blue View
I wonder if there is any NFL fan base that agonizes more over the contracts given to their players than that of the New York Giants. People worry about the Giants ledger relative to the salary cap, and just as often, react viscerally to a player getting as little as $3-5 million per year in a free agent contract, never mind one in double digits. Often the two are related, because even with a new head coach and a new senior VP of football operations (Dawn Aponte), the Giants continue to refuse to use the tools available to general managers such as void years and option bonuses to exceed the salary cap. This makes every contract seem like a life or death situation, unlike teams that treat the cap as “just a suggestion” (looking at you, Philadelphia Eagles). Furthermore, the headline number (total or average annual value) of a new multi-year contract, which gets most of the attention, is less meaningful than the fully guaranteed part of the contract. Often the headline total value winds up never being paid to the player. Daniel Jones is a good example of that. Fans saw “$160 million,” but Jones only collected a little more than half of that.
There is some justification for that agonizing when the team you follow just went 4-13 and 3-14 in its previous two seasons. On the other hand, you get what you pay for. If we expect, or even hope for, the Giants to become a good team this year, there’s only so much magic a new coaching staff can perform. How do the Giants stack up against other teams in the money they’re shelling out for their players? Let’s look position by position and see where the Giants’ player contracts rank to get some idea of whether they are spending unwisely. I’ll use the annual average value (AAV) of the contract and the fully guaranteed (FG) amount over the life of the contract rather than the current year cap hit, which is subject to GM cap magic such as prorated signing bonuses and is therefore meaningless as an assessment of the overall player cost to the team. I include only starters or key depth pieces. All numbers are from Over The Cap.
I give details for those who really care, but this piece is more about general impressions of the Giants’ spending. If you do go into the details, here are a couple of things to remember to help make sense of the numbers:
