ESPN's Bill Barnwell Unimpressed With Giants' Offseason Moves

But the arguments presented are easily disputable, so let's break it all down.

As the honeymoon continues for the New York Giants, a team that a year ago went 9-7-1 and vaulted to its first playoff berth since 2016, not everyone is impressed with the improvements made by general manager Joe Schoen in the off-season.

Bill Barnwell of ESPN is one such critic of the Giants’ moves and made little attempt to hide it. Barnwell ranks the Giants 29th in terms of off-season improvement and does laud the organization for bringing in a variety of receivers for quarterback Daniel Jones, citing the biggest addition as being tight end Darren Waller, acquired in a trade with the Raiders.

But where Barnwell’s critique of the Giants' off-seasons tarts to go off the rails, at least in my opinion, is when he looks at what went wrong with the team. And it’s here that Barnwell has quite the list, so let’s take each item one piece at a time.

The organization appears to have bought into its own hype. An unexpected trip to the postseason and a road victory once they got there was a pleasant surprise for the Giants, who had been treating 2023 as a year to get their salary cap right and begin a rebuild. Their underlying performance wasn't quite as impressive; they were outscored on the season and finished 21st in DVOA. They went 8-4-1 in games decided by eight or fewer points and were lucky to draw an even worse playoff opponent in the Vikings, whose DVOA ranked them as the sixth-worst team in the league.

I’m not sure where Barnwell is getting this notion that the organization has “bought into its own hype.” Shouldn’t every team, regardless of whatever roadblocks or hardships they’re facing, be looking to be competitive? Schoen said shortly after being hired that the team would be looking to be competitive while rebuilding.

And did anyone expect the Giants to be a powerhouse team on par with the Chiefs or Bills, considering they were trying to rebuild the culture and do so with one of the worst salary cap situations in quite some time? I mean, let’s be realistic here. Even Schoen admitted at the end of the year that they didn’t have the most talented roster last season, so again, how is that buying into one’s own hype?

Then there was this take…

They franchise-tagged Saquon Barkley and committed to Jones, signing the same player who wasn't worth a fifth-year option 12 months earlier to a four-year, $160 million deal with $81 million guaranteed over the first two seasons. They brought back Slayton and Shepard, who seemed to be on the way out, and while those weren't major deals, the move for Jones certainly was just that.

The Giants declined Jones’s fifth-year option because they didn’t know exactly what they had with him, considering the guy went through three different systems since being drafted and had an injury history.

Suppose Jones had been a disaster in the Brian Daboll-Mike Kafka system last year. You can bet the ranch that the critics would have been screaming about how foolish the Giants were to gamble on a quarterback who didn’t show himself worthy of his draft pedigree.

And going back to Barnwell’s previous point about the Giants “buying their own hype” by declining Jones’s option, perhaps Schoen figured he might end up in a position to draft a franchise quarterback if Jones didn’t work out.

Barnwell had more to say about Jones…

Jones ranked sixth in Total QBR last season, so I won't be arguing that he played poorly. In terms of Jones' development, though, coach Brian Daboll squeezed just about everything out of him. The 2019 first-rounder threw the shortest average pass of any quarterback (6.0 air yards per attempt), which helped drop his interception rate to an unsustainably-low mark of 1.1%. Jones was incredible as a scrambler, but his 708 rushing yards nearly doubled his career rushing total from Years 1 through 3. He averaged just 6.8 yards per attempt and still managed to take sacks on nearly 9% of his dropbacks. Plus, he attempted just 29.5 passes per game.

What’s missing in this analysis is how often Jones was under pressure, how many drops his receivers had, and how often his receivers, who, by the way, were a revolving door thanks to injuries, were open.

Barnwell also seems to have an issue with Jones’s $40 million APY. But he shouldn’t for a few reasons. It’s not a true $40 million, not if you look closely at the deal. Two, Jones’s APY is 11th most among quarterbacks, which is befitting of where he is in his career—that is, he’s not yet a top-10 quarterback, but he’s also not a guy whose performance last year screamed bottom half of the league.

Barnwell noted that “The cap space the Giants were supposed to be clearing last year went to Jones and Barkley, which limited what they could do to upgrade a defense that ranked 29th in DVOA last season.”

Again, not completely true. Jones’s first-year cap number is $21.75 million, which is 9.5 percent of the team’s 2023 cap. Barkley, who, if he plays on the franchise tag, will count for 4.4 percent.

If you want examples of Giants salary cap chokers, look at Leonard Williams’s $32 million hit, which represents 14.1 percent of the cap. Or look at the $22,739,609 in dead cap money, which accounts for 10.1 percent of the team’s cap and includes the dumping of receiver Kenny Golladay’s contract, which the previous regime negotiated.

In outlining what’s left to do, Barnwell puts a resolution with Saquon Barkley atop the list. However, he strays a bit off course by saying that Barkley “helps the Giants overcome their lack of impactful playmakers at wide receiver.”

While Barnwell is correct in that the team must weigh the pros and cons of investing in a running back with the injury history Barkley has, reaching a short-term deal of three years with two years of guaranteed money doesn’t necessarily need to be a cap buster for the Giants, who have already confirmed that Barkley is an integral part of their team.

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