The Giants' Saquon Barkley-Daniel Jones Dilemma

NFL Week 15 - The New York Giants have accomplished so much in 2022. Yet the New York Giants have accomplished so little in 2022.

Brian Daboll has done an outstanding coaching job with little to work with. Joe Schoen will have the salary cap ledger spic-and-span once he dumps Kenny Golladay at the Molly Pitcher turnpike rest stop and drives away. Despite a 1-4-1 record in their last six games, the Giants could reach the playoffs for the first time since 2016 and just the second time since they won the Super Bowl after the 2011 season.

Even a brief playoff cameo is nothing to scoff at for a team that has been mostly irrelevant for over a decade. Daboll and Schoen appear to have solved the Giants' culture problem, budget problem, and mismanagement problem.

Yet there are so many other problems to solve.

Daniel Jones, Saquon Barkley, and the Usual Suspects

Saquon Barkley leads the Giants in scrimmage yards, with 1,344 rushing and receiving yards to Darius Slayton's 608. He has been the Giants' best skill-position player by a wide margin.

Barkley has also been battling injuries for weeks. He has rushed 53 times for 152 yards (2.9 yards per rush) over his last four games. He is a battered running back entering free agency. The franchise tag is a possibility, but Schoen was hired almost explicitly to NOT overcompensate players such as Barkley.

So Barkley will probably walk. Wise move. But where will those 100-plus yards per game come from in 2022?

Daniel Jones refused to develop and refused to backslide in 2022. He's stubbornly a third-quartile-on-his-best-days starter. Jones is also a free agent about to enter what's likely to be a topsy-turvy quarterback transaction market. Again, the franchise tag is available, but that's an expensive proposition for a C-minus quarterback. The Giants need a real long-range plan. But what will it be, and how much will it cost?

Barkley and Jones could return to the Giants on lowball contracts, but that's unlikely. Former first-round picks rarely take pay cuts to stay with the teams that drafted them. The lowball offer is usually a signal that it's time for a change of scenery. And (Trent Baalke) someone (Trent Baalke) is likely to overpay (Baalke Baalke Baalke) for Barkley.

The Giants offense will look very different next year. But in what way? We'll spare you all the permutations. Just brace for changes that teams in the wild-card chase in mid-December rarely make in the following year.

Andrew Thomas, Dexter Lawrence, and Other Keepers

Sift through the Giants roster and you will find it surprisingly light on "keepers" despite a 7-5-1 record:

• Left tackle Andrew Thomas: Absolute keeper.
• Right tackle Evan Neal: Injuries and rookie lumps, but a keeper.
• Wide receiver Darius Slayton: A keeper who needed to work his way into the Daboll administration's good graces in training camp. But also an unrestricted free agent.
• Wide receiver Wan'Dale Robinson: A keeper, but a tiny role player recovering an ACL tear.
• Defensive linemen Dexter Lawrence and Leonard Williams: Keepers.
• Edge Kayvon Thibodeax: Disruptive rookie whose sack production could come around. Keeper.
• Edge Azeez Ojulari: Injury-ruined sophomore season, but a keeper. Ojulari and Thibs could be a dangerous edge rush duo moving forward, but some depth and diversity would be ideal.
• Safety Xavier McKinney: Injured for the last few weeks. It has shown. Absolute keeper.
• Safety Julian Love: More of a sturdy starter and locker room leader than a Pro Bowler, but a keeper. And wouldn't you know: also a free agent.

Those are the building blocks. Some of them, like Robinson, are highly provisional. Others, like Love and Slayton, have limited upside. It's not a dire situation, but the Giants don't fit the profile of an up-and-coming team ready to build on a surprise season.

Let's examine some position groups in detail

Interior Offensive Line: Mark Glowinski and Jon Feliciano are veteran scaffolds that Daboll and Schoen brought in to keep the offense respectable. Glowinski is a free agent. Nick Gates and Shane Lemieux are former starters who are still hanging around because Daboll/Schoen didn't have the resources to completely overturn the roster; Gates is a free agent. The Giants will probably need to replace both guards next year, and a center prospect would be nice.

Wide Receiver: Slayton is a plausible deep-threat WR2. Robinson could be a shifty slot WR3. Richie James is fine as a depth player, and (sheesh) a free agent. Vaporizing Golladay will save the Giants $13.5 million if they spread the pain across 2023 and 2024. The Giants need a WR1, whether to be taken seriously as more than wild-card leaf litter or to properly develop a young passer.

Tight End: Rookie Daniel Bellinger has been adequate when healthy, but he missed several games with an eye injury and the Week 14 loss to the Eagles with a rib injury. Bellinger could be included among the "building blocks," but what exactly are we building? At the very least, the Giants need bodies here.

Linebacker: Jaylon Smith is just a guy on a one-year contract; you forgot the former Notre Dame star and Cowboys starter was even on the Giants, didn't you? Tae Crowder would make a solid special teamer; the Giants have been starting him for three seasons because they have never been able to prioritize replacing him. He could end up starting in 2023 for the same reason.

Secondary: Adoree' Jackson is playing well and still in his prime but will cost the Giants over $19 million in 2023 cap space. Cutting him would save about $12 million on a two-year spread, but it's worth noting how much dead money they would be piling into 2024 with Jackson and Golladay. A trade to a contender would make sense but a) that did not work with James Bradberry because of those Gettleman-sized contracts and b) the Giants are supposed to be contenders. The Giants will probably just keep him for 2023; perhaps he can earn a sensible extension.

Darnay Holmes looked like a prospect as a slot corner in 2020 but never developed. Everyone else at cornerback and backup safety would make a lovely practice squadder.

Special Teams: Graham Gano is under contract through next year. Huzzah!

So the Giants will need, conservatively, a QB1, WR1, CB1, RB1, two starting guards, two starting linebackers, and reinforcements at positions such as tight end and slot cornerback if they hope to build upon their 2022 success. That's a tall order, and it's a testament to the mess that the previous administration left behind that the Giants still have so much left to do.

Joe Schoen's Money Matters

The good news is that the Giants will have about $75 million in cap space once they punt Golladay into the sun. There are a lot of productive things they can do with that money:

Re-sign Darius Slayton. This should have been an in-season priority once Slayton re-established himself as a capable deep threat. If Slayton hits the open market, he could get priced out of the Giants' range.

Schoen and Daboll may consider Slayton little more than a replaceable part and/or Daniel Jones binkie. They would know. But replaceable parts must still be replaced, so letting Slayton walk just opens another hole in the starting lineup.

Re-sign Julian Love. Safeties rarely fetch huge contracts on the free-agent market. Love is more valuable to the Giants than he would be to any other team, though the Raiders might nibble if Patrick Graham remains their defensive coordinator. It shouldn't cost much to lock Love into a hometown-discount contract.

Extend Leonard Williams and Dexter Lawrence. Friend-of-Walkthrough Patricia Traina of Sports Illustrated wrote about Williams earlier in December. He has an $18-million non-guaranteed 2023 contract, plus $20 million in prorated bonuses: expensive to keep, expensive to cut, but reasonably affordable to extend by converting some of that $18 million into a guaranteed bonus and pushing Williams' contract out until 2025 or so.

Lawrence will enter the fifth year of his rookie contract in 2023. The Giants have the flexibility to offer him a healthy extension. Keeping Lawrence and Williams together will allow the Giants to keep building their defense from the middle of the line out.

Andrew Thomas and Xavier McKinney too. Thomas will be eligible for an extension starting this offseason. Why wait to lock down the best player on the roster? Schoen can use a chunk of that $75 million to front-load a Thomas extension, keeping his cap numbers manageable so the Giants have more maneuverability in a few years, when they hopefully have more quality players to pay. Thomas is slated to only earn a $1-million base salary in 2023: he'll listen to an offer full of immediate new money, even if it doesn't reshape the left tackle market.

The last paragraph also applies to McKinney, but at lower prices.

Bargain-shop the back-end free agents. Players such as Richie James and Xavier Oshimes are worth low-cost tender offers. One of the benefits of remaining competitive is that Daboll and Schoen know who is really with the program and can spend their spare change wisely. It's hard to evaluate the back half of the roster during a Looney Tunes season.

Dip a toe into free agency. A typical wild-card-level team can usually justify signing a big-name/big-money veteran or two. The Giants cannot, especially in a free-agent class that lacks a prime-career, blue-chip cornerback, edge, or wide receiver. Cornerback Byron Murphy would be the Giants' best free-agent target based on the current market, and plenty of other suitors will line up if the Cardinals do something foolish like let Murphy walk. (Which they will, so they can spend their money on Julio Jones or something.)

The best young receiver on the current market might actually be Slayton, which explains why the Giants should spend so much cap space in-house. The free-agent class will look much better once cap-strapped teams begin cost-cutting, but the Giants should not spend big bucks on anyone unless he is under 27 years old and plays a high-leverage position. Come to think of it, that's sound advice for just about every team.

The Giants had two "false positive" seasons in the last decade. They overreacted to a 10-6 season in 2016, added wide receiver Brandon Marshall and extended the Eli Manning window, essentially plunging them into the rut that they are still mired in. Then Dave Gettleman pretended that a 6-10 finish in 2020 was a sign that they were budding Super Bowl contenders and began tossing satchels of money out of helicopters, turning the rut into the canyon Daboll/Schoen are pulling the franchise out of.

This season looks a lot like that 2016 season. It's a sign the organization is doing some things right and some young players are on the right track. It should not be interpreted as a reason to shift into Win Now mode. Fortunately, the fellas who run the team almost certainly realize that.

The New York Giants and the 2023 Draft

Best available athlete at wide receiver/cornerback/edge in the first round, unless Schoen and Daboll are in lust with one of the second-tier quarterbacks.

A guard or center, a linebacker, and maybe a Barkley successor in Day 2, when the Giants have three picks.

A Bailey Zappe/Brock Purdy lottery ticket on Day 3, plus depth everywhere.

The end. Walkthrough refuses to start fiddling with a mock draft simulator before Christmas.

What the Giants Should Do at Quarterback

No clue. But the following all sound like terrible ideas:

• Retaining Jones. It's unlikely to happen and sends the wrong message about the team's rebuilding timetable.
• Trading up for C.J. Stroud or Bryce Young. It will cost too many picks. The Giants have too many needs.
• Getting into a bidding war for Jimmy Garoppolo or (if released) Derek Carr. The sentence is its own explanation.
• Pretending Lamar Jackson will be available or Tom Brady is a realistic option. This ain't Giants fanfic.
• Sam Darnold-like reclamation projects. Might as well just keep Jones.
• Trey Lance? Heh … that sounds more like a Commanders sort of deal.

Now that the sexy options have been eliminated, there's:

• The Return of Geno Smith. Intriguing at the right price, which Walkthrough wrote about a few weeks ago. Lots of folks at the time figured that Smith had earned a Ryan Tannehill contract. The dude who signed Tannehill to that contract just got fired.
• Anthony Richardson, Will Levis, etc. We're way behind on our draft prep. Sorry. As listed above, if Schoen and Daboll love any rookie quarterback likely to be within a few spots of where they draft, they should do their thing.
• Tyler Heinicke-tier bridge options. Jacoby Brissett or Gardner Minshew fall into this range. There's some logic to the Commanders and Giants swapping Jones and Heinicke (resetting expectations, possibly saving some cash) while figuring out their next steps at quarterback, or the Giants kicking Minshew's tires while Jones leaves to become Jalen Hurts' fleet-footed backup.

Yuck. Unless Daboll gets Josh Allen vibes from Richardson (and about six other teams don't get those vibes), none of these options sound appealing. This predicament was created by success. Perhaps we should set the future aside for a moment and celebrate that success.

The New York Giants and the Joy of Adequacy

Some Giants fans visited Walkthrough's preferred South Jersey tavern one NFL Sunday early in the year, had a bit too much to drink, lapsed into goblin mode, and began stirring up trouble after a victory. "This is the Giants' year, buddy," one said, blowing a .25 breathalyzer into Walkthrough's face. The bartender 86'd them a few minutes later, mostly for their own safety.

Those Giants fans were nowhere to be found when the Eagles pasted their team on Sunday, but that's not the point. The point is that it's fun to get a little tipsy after a few victories and dream big. That was one of last week's Walkthrough talking points: the Faustian bargain of one Super Bowl for nine guaranteed last-place finishes. Giants fans just experienced something close to that. No wonder a few of them were willing to risk a parking-lot curb-stomping over some September sunshine! What looks like wild-card noodling to a Packers or Patriots fan is enough to make Giants fans briefly, joyously delirious.

The Packers comeback, the Ravens comeback, the Jaguars comeback: they were unforgettable moments for fans and made Sundays unpredictable and fun for all of us. Talk of an Odell Beckham return? Visions of sugarplums! A Sunday night rematch with the Commanders in mid-December which actually has playoff implications? A chance to visit a truly vulnerable division champion like the Buccaneers or Vikings and swipe a playoff win? Who is the FIEND writing all of this off as just a meaningless prelude to an offseason of questions and tempered expectations?

Oops. It's me. Sorry. The Giants shouldn't hold a parade for a playoff berth, but their fans should pour some shots and scream their heads off. Just not at P.J.'s, fellas.

Daboll has won a bunch of games while Schoen has cleared $51 million in death-by-Gettleman money off the books in 2022. That's like a pair of frugal parents pulling the family out of deep debt while still buying some holiday presents and taking the kids to all the superhero movies.

East Rutherford is now an appealing destination to both free agents and current players seeking extensions: someone like Lawrence/Williams/Thomas is more likely to stick around than they ever would have been if the previous regime was still in charge.

The Giants accomplished a lot this season. There's still a lot of this season for them to play. And whatever they chose to do come the offseason will be relevant and significant, not just to fans but to the NFC East/NFL balance of power. It hasn't felt that way in years, and that's an accomplishment in its own right.