How the Giants Salary Cap Evolved into Its Current State

How did the New York Giants end up with under $300,000 of salary cap space per NFLPA records? Here's an in-depth look at what went wrong and the fall out for the 2022 off-season.

 

One of the first things the Giants general manager will need to address is a team salary cap situation that has spiraled out of control due to some gambles not panning out and, in part, due to a ridiculous number of injuries that have had a bearing on the team.

This has left the Giants with an alarming $267,358 of cap space, per the latest NFLPA public cap report. And although that total will likely rise once all the off-season accounting is done to determine who receives incentive payouts and who doesn't, that's still a far cry from having a nice little cushion of leftover cap space to carry into the new league year that begins in March.

Let’s look at where the Giants salary cap currently stands, how it got to this point, and what it means for 2022.

The 2021 Season

The Giants chose a high-risk, high-reward course of action to address their roster deficiencies, and that was to pump money into free agents. Driving that decision, no doubt, was a need to add playmakers to a woeful offense that the year before finished 31st in the league in average points per game scored.

The Giants sunk big money into receiver Kenny Golladay (four years, $72 million), tight end Kyle Rudolph (2 years, $12 million), and running back Devontae Booker (2 years, $5.5 million). They also added some pieces on the defense (Adoree' Jackson), and they re-signed Leonard Williams to a new blockbuster deal.

On paper, the Giants were smart in that they managed to keep the first year of those big contracts reasonably low so as to not to choke the cap. However, two things ended up backfiring that they didn’t see coming.

We can all probably agree that the Giants’ evaluation of the projected starting offensive line wasn’t completely spot on. While they appear to have a keeper in Andrew Thomas, guard Will Hernandez has regressed so much after a promising rookie season that it would take a miracle for him to be back on this team next year.

The same can also be said of right tackle Nate Solder, who for most of the season managed to hold off Matt Peart, last year’s third-round pick, from earning a starting spot. Solder agreed to an adjusted contract in which the 2022 season will be voided though the team will have to absorb a $4 million dead money hit.

Without a solid offensive line in pace, it essentially didn’t matter who was under center or who the receivers and other skill position players were. The Giants' offense struggled and created a situation where a case could be made that they didn’t give their franchise quarterback, Daniel Jones, a fair chance.

The second and perhaps most significant factor was injuries. While every team has injuries and teams with injuries have figured out ways to overcome them, the problem with the Giants is that the combination of injuries and the contracts they had in 2021 didn't lead to a winning season.

The Giants, per Spotrac, have an estimated $40,829,531 tied up on a league-high 24 players who are on injured reserve. That’s the sixth-highest figure devoted to players on IR in the league, an amount that comes to 22.3 percent of their 2021 salary cap and is well above the league average of $15,161,890 per team.

While we can theorize who or what’s at fault for the injuries—and that’s a topic for another article—that’s a big reason why as the season started to wind down, the Giants had to restructure contracts.

There is another item that’s a bit of a head-scratcher: The plan itself to add so much talent via free agency, including all those one-year “prove it” deals. Thanks to the effect of COVID, it was anticipated that league revenue, and hence the 2021 salary cap, would take a hit due to the lost revenue.

That forecast came to fruition as the 2021 cap landed at $182.5 million, down from the $198.2 million in 2020. As a result, many teams were forced to cut players to comply with the lower figure.

While the lower-than-expected cap should have been the first warning not to go crazy with spending, even on one-year prove-it deals, the Giants, perhaps feeling a sense of urgency in trying to build off a relatively decent first season under head coach Joe Judge (despite the 6-10 record, the Giants were in the playoff race until the final week), went for it only to come up way short of the goal.

Getting back to the topic of injuries, anyone associated with an NFL team will preach that injuries are not an excuse for performance or lack thereof. But when speaking of injury metrics, one needs to look at who the injury bug has bitten more so than the number of injuries themselves.

According to ManGamesLost, the Giants have the most games missed by players due to injuries (COVID-19 is also included in this data). Their list of key players, especially starters, that have missed games is staggering.

When the Giants won their last Super Bowl in 2011, they finished as the second-most injured team, behind Jacksonville.

What was the difference? Many of those lost for the season in 2011, the list of which can be found here, were mainly reserve players.

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The 2022 Season

The fall-out of the Giants' plan to spend on free agency combined with the ridiculously high amount of money sitting on injured reserve has now created an unfavorable situation for the team for 2022.

The first factor to consider is that all of those big-money deals that had low first-year cap figures will rise significantly in the second year. The average cap hit of the Giants' top five projected cap numbers (defensive lineman Leonard Williams, cornerback James Bradberry, receiver Kenny Golladay, cornerback Adoree’ Jackson, and linebacker Blake Martinez) comes to $19.96 million. 

Together, though, those five contracts alone account for $99.838 million or nearly 47.8 percent of the announced $208.2 million 2022 salary cap. This makes the Giants unquestionably top-heavy.

With nearly 50 percent of their cap tied up into five players, that means some deep cuts and some additional restructures are going to be necessary—and not just with the top five highest cap figures.

One thing that will help the Giants cap is they don’t have any pending free agents on whom they’d have to spend big money to retain.

They’ve already agreed to pick up the option year of running back Saquon Barkley’s contract, a move that will cost them less in 2022 ($7.217 million) than it did in 2021 ($10.025 million).

And they might be able to clear some money if they move on from receiver Sterling Shepard ($4.505 million), Kyle Rudolph ($5 million), and Riley Dixon $2.8 million).

Final Thoughts

It’s probably safe to say that the unexpected surge in injuries hurt the Giants’ cap for 2021, which carries over into 2022.  

But it’s also fair to question some of the strategies behind the roster-building process. The biggest one is sinking so much money into free agency, particularly on the offensive side of the ball on what the team thought were players that could help them. 

Meanwhile, they hoped that the offensive line would be improved enough to make the plan come together, which, as we know by now, did not happen.

This all stems back to a question of just who this Giants team is. In 2018, the Giants thought they could rebuild and compete simultaneously, only to later admit an error in judgment.

At that point, the Giants needed to decide whether they required a rebuild or were ready to compete and function accordingly.  

They came into 2019 drafting their franchise quarterback without completely fixing the offensive line. While the decision to play Jones two regular-season games into his rookie season lies on coaching, it’s fair to say the Giants didn’t do him any favors by not ensuring that he had a solid supporting cast.

The Giants didn’t deteriorate over one or two seasons from being a Super Bowl champion into the state they are in today. And who knows how long it might take for them to get things in order, but the first step toward doing so begins with taking a long, hard look in the mirror and being honest about the talent that’s on this roster—including the coaching—and devising a plan that seeks growth on a year-by-year basis. 

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