With all the steps taken, the New York Giants should now be below the $208.2 million salary cap after all bookkeeping is done.
Over The Cap is still listing the Giants over the $3.72 million limit. The pay cuts taken by wide receiver Sterling Shepherd and linebacker Blake Martinez have not yet appeared in the OTC database.
The estimates – and that’s what they are – show that the pay cuts undertaken by Martinez and Shepard should save the giants $10 million to $10.5 million from the ceiling. If Newsday’s Tom Rock is right, the savings could be another couple of million.
I was told that both Sterling Shepard and Blake Martinez had agreed on a base salary of approximately $2.25 million with the option to double that amount (approximately $5 million) with incentives in new deals. Should reduce Martinez’s net worth from $14 million to around $8 million and Shepard’s net worth from $12.4 million to around $6.5 million.
— Tom Rock (@TomRock_Newsday) March 12, 2022
So the best guess — and again, it’s a reasonable guess — is that the Giants lost somewhere around $7 million because of these actions. Maybe a little more.
Kyle Rudolph’s cut saved the Giants $5 million with 2.4 million dead cap. Decreasing Devontae Booker saved $2.125 million with a $1 million dead cap. Riley Dixon’s cut saved $2.8 million with only $320,000 dead money. Dropping Caden Smith saved the Giants $2.54 million from the cap.
So add it all up and GM Joe Sean has cut somewhere around $22-25 million off the ceiling at the moment. It’s good, and it makes the Giants complain about the league’s rules. However, Schoen still has some work to do to meet his stated goal of $40 million in ceiling cuts.
The Giants will need over $12 million to sign their rookies. They will need more money than they currently have if they hope to do anything under free will. They will need money to work during the season, sign replacements for injured players, etc.
How will they get there?
The biggest card the Giants have yet to play is tied to experienced cornerback James Bradberry. The 29-year-old has a $21.863 million cap hit in the final year of his $43.5 million three-year hiatus. There will be an invalid year in 2023 in which the $1.363 million limit is reached.
Bradberry is 29 years old, healthy, and has no reason to take a Martinez-Shepard-style pay cut. The extension pushes money into the future, which Sean said he doesn’t want to do and probably won’t give the Giants the cap relief they need now.
If the Giants cut or traded Bradbury now, they’ll save $12.136 million on the limit and lose $9,727 of dead money. It’s true that if they cut Bradberry after June 1st, they’ll save more ($13.5M) and carry less dead money ($8.363M).
The difficulty the Giants had in cutting or trading Bradberry after June 1, or even keeping Bradberry and trading him during the draft, is that they now need the savings that a contract termination would provide.
Even with the work they’ve done, they’ll be in trouble once free will kicks in if they don’t do more.
There are other steps they can take to get a little relief without going deep into contract restructuring, which Sean says will be a “last resort” to push the limit on the order.
- Trade in Saquon Barclay. I won’t get into the debate again about whether they should or shouldn’t trade Barkley. I’ll just say it would give them $7,217 in cap cuts with no dead money.
- Cut out Nick Gates. It seems unlikely that Gates will play this season after suffering a horrific leg injury in 2021. He has a cap of $3.004 million and the Giants could save $2.125 million by cutting him. Maybe they’ll bring him back on a minimum veteran contract, which will cut down on the savings, but it’ll be cool.
- Cut or trade Darius Slayton. Despite the 2021 season being below par, Slayton qualified for the proven performance escalators that raised his 2022 cap to $2.598 million. The Giants could save $2.54 million with just $58,721 in dead money.
- Cut by Oshane Jiminez. The 2019 third round selection did not sit well with the previous coaching staff. The Giants can save $995k against the $209,195 dead money cap.
- Cut or trade Julian Love. Like Slayton, Love qualified for performance-proven escalators, which raised his bar to $2.732 million. The Giants could have saved $2.54 million with just $192,715 in dead money if they had gone further.