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I need to make sure everyone understands exactly how bad the Giants OL situation is


minutemancl

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There's this old saying when it comes to the draft: "You don't draft for need". The Giants will have to draft for need this year, and that need is OL.

Here are the facts, no judgement required:

The Giants are rostering 6 (but saying 7) OL in 2022 according to OverTheCap. Those rostered players are Andrew Thomas, Nick Gates, Matt Peart, Wes Martin, Shane Lemieux, and Ben Bredeson. We are paying Nate Solder 4 million to not play for us. Shane Lemieux suffered a partial patellar tendon tear in preseason and received surgery for it in late September. Nick Gates was injured week 2 with a 'gruesome' leg injury that Joe Judge mentioned could potentially be career ending. Matt Peart tore his ACL last week. The Giants are projected to have, according to OverTheCap, about $2 million in cap space in 2022.

Here are the opinions:

Andrew Thomas is a stud at LT. Wes Martin and Ben Bredeson are practice squad level players. Shane Lemieux run blocked well, but was, by some metrics, the worst pass blocking guard in football last year. There is no relying on him at any level after coming off surgery for currently the worst injury you can suffer in professional football. Nick Gates is solid at every position along the line, but we have no idea on the severity of his injury or how it will affect his play going forward. Matt Peart is a bust who is not cut out to play OL, and he wouldn't even be available until halfway through next season at the very earliest. He is done.

Looking ahead right now, our OL before free agency and the draft week 1 is Andrew Thomas- Ben Bredeson- Nobody- Wes Martin- Nobody.

We have $2 million in cap space, 3 starters, and 1 player of starting quality.

There have been jokes about "draft 9 OL!" but seriously, that is not far from the truth of what we have to do. We need 4 starters along the offensive line. The good news is we have many and high quality draft picks. The problem is that rookies are still rookies, and there is no guarantee you hit on any of them. We do not have the ability to sign quality OL in free agency.

So obviously, this a problem. The only solution is to sign who you can to get enough bodies on the roster and draft multiple OL you hope to hit on. There is a very, very low chance our OL is anything better than poor next year regardless of the choices made this year. The only hope is that it is better poised to improve in 2023.

This is the single greatest indictment on Dave Gettleman as a GM. He has bungled the OL situation to the point where the OL as it was when he took over in 2017 and said "we've got to fix the O-line, let's be honest. Let's not kid each other. Big men allow you to compete, and that's what we've got to fix" is better than it is now, by a decent margin.

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It just baffles me that the ONE THING this man was brought in as an "expert" in continues to be the biggest weakness on this team. Multiple HC's, OC's, Oline coaches have come and gone yet here we are still talking about the Oline. He's had 3 draft classes, 3 offseasons and we sit here with 1 starting caliber Olineman. Is it bad picks? Is it the offensive scheme? Is it Rob Sale? Zeitler went off to Baltimore and seems to be a stud over there... I'm just baffled at the utter incompetence. 

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20 hours ago, minutemancl said:

There's this old saying when it comes to the draft: "You don't draft for need". The Giants will have to draft for need this year, and that need is OL.

Here are the facts, no judgement required:

The Giants are rostering 6 (but saying 7) OL in 2022 according to OverTheCap. Those rostered players are Andrew Thomas, Nick Gates, Matt Peart, Wes Martin, Shane Lemieux, and Ben Bredeson. We are paying Nate Solder 4 million to not play for us. Shane Lemieux suffered a partial patellar tendon tear in preseason and received surgery for it in late September. Nick Gates was injured week 2 with a 'gruesome' leg injury that Joe Judge mentioned could potentially be career ending. Matt Peart tore his ACL last week. The Giants are projected to have, according to OverTheCap, about $2 million in cap space in 2022.

Here are the opinions:

Andrew Thomas is a stud at LT. Wes Martin and Ben Bredeson are practice squad level players. Shane Lemieux run blocked well, but was, by some metrics, the worst pass blocking guard in football last year. There is no relying on him at any level after coming off surgery for currently the worst injury you can suffer in professional football. Nick Gates is solid at every position along the line, but we have no idea on the severity of his injury or how it will affect his play going forward. Matt Peart is a bust who is not cut out to play OL, and he wouldn't even be available until halfway through next season at the very earliest. He is done.

Looking ahead right now, our OL before free agency and the draft week 1 is Andrew Thomas- Ben Bredeson- Nobody- Wes Martin- Nobody.

We have $2 million in cap space, 3 starters, and 1 player of starting quality.

There have been jokes about "draft 9 OL!" but seriously, that is not far from the truth of what we have to do. We need 4 starters along the offensive line. The good news is we have many and high quality draft picks. The problem is that rookies are still rookies, and there is no guarantee you hit on any of them. We do not have the ability to sign quality OL in free agency.

So obviously, this a problem. The only solution is to sign who you can to get enough bodies on the roster and draft multiple OL you hope to hit on. There is a very, very low chance our OL is anything better than poor next year regardless of the choices made this year. The only hope is that it is better poised to improve in 2023.

This is the single greatest indictment on Dave Gettleman as a GM. He has bungled the OL situation to the point where the OL as it was when he took over in 2017 and said "we've got to fix the O-line, let's be honest. Let's not kid each other. Big men allow you to compete, and that's what we've got to fix" is better than it is now, by a decent margin.

Why is the giants cap situation so bad?  Just curious.

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14 hours ago, Shockwave said:

It just baffles me that the ONE THING this man was brought in as an "expert" in continues to be the biggest weakness on this team. Multiple HC's, OC's, Oline coaches have come and gone yet here we are still talking about the Oline. He's had 3 draft classes, 3 offseasons and we sit here with 1 starting caliber Olineman. Is it bad picks? Is it the offensive scheme? Is it Rob Sale? Zeitler went off to Baltimore and seems to be a stud over there... I'm just baffled at the utter incompetence. 

Will Hernandez has gotten worse every year he's been in the league. Nate Solder was a bad signing (I could go into the nuances of Nate Solder for hours. To sum it up, I don't necessarily blame Gettleman or Solder himself for being so poor. I write it off like a player who had a freak injury).

I think you are looking at a combination of bad evaluations overall, both of prospects and your own players on the roster, as well as not enough resource usage. Giants are currently spending the 27th most cap space in the league on their OL. In 4 drafts, 32 total picks, he's taken 5 OL- 3 tackles, 2 guards. 1 in the 1st, 1 in the 2nd, 1 in the 3rd, 1 in the 5th, 1 in the 7th. All of his OL signings have been garbage. The 3 good moves he's made were finding Nick Gates, who is injured, drafting Andrew Thomas, and trading for Kevin Zeitler, who was released after 2 years. Every other move has failed. That is a low, low hit rate at a position that requires 5 hits that he's taken very few chances on. The result is this.

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2 minutes ago, MKnight82 said:

Why is the giants cap situation so bad?  Just curious.

It is similar to a 'perfect storm' situation where multiple factors are colliding at once in 2022. We've got older expensive contracts from years prior reaching their final 1 or 2 years where the money goes up very high (James Bradberry, Blake Martinez, Sterling Shepard), and with the free agency splurge we just had last year, those contracts all had very low 2021 cap hits but were balanced out by exponentially higher cap hits in following years (which start in 2022) (Kenny Golladay, Leonard Williams, Adoree Jackson).

The only reason for hope on this team in the near future is that those guys that we are spending a lot of money on, the ones I named, are actually still good players. We don't really have any albatross types of contracts where guys are awful but being paid a lot. These guys in some cases may not be entirely worth their contracts, but they can still play and don't have serious injury history. And in 2023, our cap space opens up massively again, especially if we don't pay Saquon (which we shouldn't) or pick up DJ's 5th year option (tbd).

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I think I'm actually going to do a mock offseason this weekend for the Giants and post it here. Normally the sheer amount of possible options you can take in one offseason is so daunting that it is hard to find a place to start, but there really is only one path you can take to get on the right path to fixing the team this offseason.

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13 minutes ago, minutemancl said:

It is similar to a 'perfect storm' situation where multiple factors are colliding at once in 2022. We've got older expensive contracts from years prior reaching their final 1 or 2 years where the money goes up very high (James Bradberry, Blake Martinez, Sterling Shepard), and with the free agency splurge we just had last year, those contracts all had very low 2021 cap hits but were balanced out by exponentially higher cap hits in following years (which start in 2022) (Kenny Golladay, Leonard Williams, Adoree Jackson).

The only reason for hope on this team in the near future is that those guys that we are spending a lot of money on, the ones I named, are actually still good players. We don't really have any albatross types of contracts where guys are awful but being paid a lot. These guys in some cases may not be entirely worth their contracts, but they can still play and don't have serious injury history. And in 2023, our cap space opens up massively again, especially if we don't pay Saquon (which we shouldn't) or pick up DJ's 5th year option (tbd).

It’s pretty unusual for a rebuilding team to be in a bad cap situation, especially one with a QB still on a rookie contract.  Seems like you’re heading for a 3-4 year rebuild, probably should try to scrap those higher priced contracts this off-season.

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33 minutes ago, MKnight82 said:

It’s pretty unusual for a rebuilding team to be in a bad cap situation, especially one with a QB still on a rookie contract.  Seems like you’re heading for a 3-4 year rebuild, probably should try to scrap those higher priced contracts this off-season.

It's not that unusual for a team in a perpetual rebuild that has deluded themselves into thinking they can be competitive.

There is no time frame on a rebuild; it does not take a set number of years to make a team competitive. It can happen in one offseason. You just need to make the right moves.

I don't think we can scrap these higher priced players and field a roster of 53. The dead money incurred would limit the cap space we have to the point where we could not sign enough replacement level players on the open market to field a full roster. Like I said, the cap situation improves massively in 2023, and the dead money incurred on any of those contracts in 2023 is significantly lower than in 2022. We have to make the best of a crappy situation in 2022 and use it as an evaluation year before truly blowing up the roster in 2023.

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39 minutes ago, MKnight82 said:

It’s pretty unusual for a rebuilding team to be in a bad cap situation, especially one with a QB still on a rookie contract.  Seems like you’re heading for a 3-4 year rebuild, probably should try to scrap those higher priced contracts this off-season.

The problem is they didn't think they were rebuilding and now it's going to hurt them for years, as you mentioned. They completely misread the talent they had on the roster and now they have no ability to fix it (other than the draft picks)

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21 hours ago, minutemancl said:

 

Looking ahead right now, our OL before free agency and the draft week 1 is Andrew Thomas- Ben Bredeson- Nobody- Wes Martin- Nobody.

 

I could be wrong but I do think Billy Price is under team control for next year. He was the second best OL this year which obviously isn't saying much but my hunch is he's passable if the pieces around him are better. Would much prefer him being a backup but I do think they at least have him on the roster if they want him.

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3 minutes ago, minutemancl said:

There is no time frame on a rebuild; it does not take a set number of years to make a team competitive. It can happen in one offseason. You just need to make the right moves.

Its not going to happen in one offseason based on the draft only and no cap space to sign anyone. 

3 minutes ago, minutemancl said:

I don't think we can scrap these higher priced players and field a roster of 53.

Yes you could, the team just wouldn't be very good, which is where you're at anyways. Why have an expensive bad team when you could have a cheap bad team? 

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3 minutes ago, MKnight82 said:

Its not going to happen in one offseason based on the draft only and no cap space to sign anyone. 

Yes you could, the team just wouldn't be very good, which is where you're at anyways. Why have an expensive bad team when you could have a cheap bad team? 

I'm not saying it is going to for the Giants from 2021 to 2022. I've explicitly said the opposite. I'm saying it can and has happened for other teams many times. A rebuild can't be measured in time, ie "based on where you are now, it will take X years before you are good again".

Because for one, we physically cannot do that. Cutting the big contracts that don't expire in 2023 means letting go of Kenny Golladay, Logan Ryan, Leonard Williams, and Adoree Jackson. We physically cannot do that. The dead money hits on 3/4 are greater than their 2022 contracts. We'd go from $2 million in cap space to -$10 million (negative 10 million) in cap space. 

Regardless of the barriers in front of you as a GM, your goal is to field a good team and win games. Why make the team worse for next to no future benefit? Why cut old money now, take on enormous amounts of dead money, only to sign bad players to new money, just to field a full roster? That doesn't make any sense. It makes much more sense to play out this season and let those contracts expire naturally (like Bradberry, Martinez, and others will) or cut bait with others after 2022 to sign new players. Cap space will not be an issue in 2023 for the Giants, most likely. They will be able to sign anyone they want that wants to play for them even if they keep the big contracts for 2023.

And if you just wait until 2023, Bradberry, Martinez are off the books (almost; Bradberry has got a void year of about a million in 2023). You'd save over $50 million in cap space (that's counting the dead money as well) by cutting the 4 I mentioned above. You'd be rostering about 30 players, but you'd have like 3/4ths of the total cap to spend. 

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30 minutes ago, GMENNATION said:

I could be wrong but I do think Billy Price is under team control for next year. He was the second best OL this year which obviously isn't saying much but my hunch is he's passable if the pieces around him are better. Would much prefer him being a backup but I do think they at least have him on the roster if they want him.

Billy Price is an UFA after this year. His 5th year option was declined by CIN before they traded him to us.

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1 hour ago, minutemancl said:

Why make the team worse for next to no future benefit?

1) to get a higher draft pick. 

2) You may stumble upon some solid players in the process. 

 

Its nonsensical to me to trot out the same overpaid roster that won 4 games. 

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12 minutes ago, MKnight82 said:

1) to get a higher draft pick. 

2) You may stumble upon some solid players in the process. 

 

Its nonsensical to me to trot out the same overpaid roster that won 4 games. 

The problems on the team are well documented, and they sure as hell aren't James Bradberry, Blake Martinez, Kenny Golladay, Adoree Jackson, Logan Ryan, and Leonard Williams. There are arguments for them being overpaid, but that list is almost all of the good players we have on our entire roster. Should the Eagles have cut Lane Johnson, Fletcher Cox, Jason Kelce, and Darius Slay because they won 4 games last year?

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