The 2025 Giants are not built to win now

It’s easy to be optimistic at this time of year, when the New York Giants’ record is 0-0, there are three new quarterbacks on the team, including the hoped-for QB of the future, the pass rush could be ferocious, and the secondary may have plugged a couple of holes. There are legitimate questions about the futures of Brian Daboll and Joe Schoen if the team doesn’t have some success in 2025.

Realistically, though, it would be a surprise if the Giants contended this season. Never say never – the Washington Commanders showed that last season. Washington’s schedule was pretty similar in difficulty to that of the Giants. Their only real advantage was getting to play the Giants twice, which of course the Giants didn’t get to do (though the Giants did often beat themselves last season – see the first Washington, Cincinnati, first Dallas, Carolina, and New Orleans games).

The big thing in the Commanders’ favor was that No. 2 draft pick, which became Jayden Daniels. Washington GM Adam Peters said just before the 2024 season began that the Commanders weren’t in a rebuild; they were looking to win now. And he and head coach Dan Quinn delivered on that. I don’t know whether he already knew enough about Daniels that he was sure he’d be an instant success before he even got to training camp, or whether it was camp that gave him that conviction. But Peters built that team as if he expected it to be a contender, signing a bunch of prominent veterans who were on the downside of their careers but still had something left to 1-year contracts (e.g., Bobby Wagner, Zach Ertz, Cornelius Lucas, Dante Fowler) and signing or trading for others in mid-career (e.g., Frankie Luvu, Marshon Lattimore, Dorance Armstrong, Jeremy Chinn).

The Giants under Joe Schoen have mostly not operated that way, with two notable exceptions: The $40M annual average value (AAV) Daniel Jones contract (though Jones was never what you’d call prominent) and the brief $17M AAV Darren Waller fever dream. Neither worked out, to put it mildly. Joe Schoen seems to have learned his lesson from that and has otherwise mostly eschewed high-profile free agents or trades. Furthermore, other than the Jones debacle, he has avoided giving large contracts to the Giants’ own drafted players.

Here is where the most highly paid Giant at each position ranks among his peers. We use the AAV of the contract, which is more indicative than the current year’s cap hit, as the latter is manipulated by GMs in a given season depending on when they need to create cap space. First, the offense:

• QB: 24th ($10.5M, Russell Wilson)
• LT: 4th ($23.5M, Andrew Thomas)
• RT: 22nd ($7M, Jermaine Eluemunor)
• WR: 30th ($12.0M, Darius Slayton)
• TE: 62nd ($1.4M, Chris Manhertz)
• RB: 16th ($5.5M, Devin Singletary)
• LG: 9th ($10.0M, Jon Runyan Jr.)
• RG: 23rd ($3.25M, Greg Van Roten)
• C: 24th ($1.6M, John Michael Schmitz)

Next, the defense:

• Edge defender: 7th ($28.2M, Brian Burns)
• IDL: 10th ($22.5M, Dexter Lawrence)
• ILB: 15th ($10.0M, Bobby Okereke)
• CB: 16th ($18.0M, Paulson Adebo)
• S: 9th ($15.1M, Jevon Holland)

And finally, special teams:

• K: 4th ($5.5M, Graham Gano)
• P: 8th ($3.0M, Jamie Gillan)
• LS: 16th ($1.4M, Casey Kreiter)

Other than special teams, only four Giants rank in the top 10 in NFL contract AAV at their position: Andrew Thomas, Jon Runyan Jr., Brian Burns, Dexter Lawrence, and Jevon Holland. Only Runyan is not an upper-echelon player, and his contract is only $10 million per year. The Burns and Lawrence contracts are reasonable. Here are the 2024 pass rushing productivity (PRP) values for the top 20 highest-paid edge defenders and interior defensive linemen. PRP is a Pro Football Focus stat that combines sacks, hits, and hurries relative to the number of pass rush snaps, but with hurries and hits weighted less than sacks. It is a more stable metric than sacks alone:

Data from Pro Football Focus and Over The Cap

(For the record, Burns finished fourth in ESPN’s pass rush win rate last season.) Some fans considered Burns’ contract pricey as he is not a member of the elite tier occupied by players such as Myles Garrett and Micah Parsons. We can see from the figure, though, that Burns’ PRP was in the middle of the range of PRPs that the five highest-paid PRPs put up. It’s also in the middle of the range of the lower-paid players. The best description of the plot is that there is no particular relationship between how much an edge rusher gets paid and how well he performs rushing the passer.

A similar story can be told for IDLs in the figure on the right. You can say from the figure that there are two tiers of IDLs: Those making in tens of $M and those making in the 20s of $M. Lawrence is in the upper tier of salaries but is not the highest, and last year (when he was injured part of the season), he was among the highest in PRP but not THE highest. Again, there is little correlation between how much a good IDL makes and how well he performs. Instead, at any high-value position, in general, you get paid more the more recently you signed. As Ed pointed out, the Giants added just $3M in incentives to Lawrence’s contract, most likely a recognition that in today’s IDL contract environment, his contract has fallen behind his production.

Despite the Giants not having any mega-contracts on the books in 2025, they are the lowest in the NFL at the moment, with only $3.8M of cap space. Why is that? Nick Korte of Over The Cap tracks void year costs for all NFL teams. Here is his most recent update:

Courtesy @nickkorte on X

In the next tier we find division rival Washington:

@nickkorte on X

Where are the Giants?

@nickkorte on X

The Philadelphia Eagles have about a season and a half’s worth of cap space just in void year costs (including option bonuses, their preferred way of dealing with things like Jalen Hurts’ $51M/yr contract). The Dallas Cowboys are eighth with $62.8M of void year costs. Only $10.6M of that is associated with Dak Prescott’s $240M, $60M AAV contract extension…at the moment. Prescott’s contract contains three additional “place-holder” void years with zero costs to date but which will undoubtedly be used to restructure his contract, since he has cap hits of $51M, $74M, $68M, and $78M coming up in 2025-2028.

Washington has a relatively modest $29.6M in void year costs on the books so far. That’s a lot more than the nada the Giants have, but it’s not an unworkable amount. The way they have been able to construct a Super Bowl-contending roster, beyond picking the right quarterback at No. 2, is by getting a lot of older players to sign modest contracts, most of them one year at a time, presumably in the players’ eyes for a shot at a ring and/or possibly a shot at one more big contract if they do get a ring. That’s worth having some void money on the books.

That is an avenue the Giants do not have open to them right now. Free agents have not been fearful of signing with them, as the Paulson Adebo and Jevon Holland contracts show, but those players got something close to market value for their positions and rank among their peers. Also, they are young, just getting their second contract, not older veterans. And this is where we see the big difference between what Joe Schoen and Adam Peters are doing:

Courtesy giants.com and commanders.com

The Giants have many more players age 27 and younger, and especially 24 and younger, than the Commanders do, while the Commanders have many more players age 28-31 than the Giants do. Those two 21-year-olds on the Giants’ roster? Malik Nabers (38 college games) and Abdul Carter (42 college games). Jaxson Dart is 22 (45 college games). Jayden Daniels (55 college games) is 24; that may be one facet of why he excelled so soon as a pro.

That is the difference between a win-now and a win-later philosophy. Peters, of course, wants to build something lasting, as John Lynch and he did in San Francisco, but he apparently decided before his first draft that he could win now and signed fairly prominent older veteran free agents before he had even drafted Daniels. I’m not sure he knew that Daniels would be as good as he was right out of the chute, but it worked. Many of those older veterans came back on one-year deals this year, and he added Von Miller to boot, also on a one-year deal, so he is doubling down on that strategy.

The only older veteran of any real consequence that Joe Schoen has on the roster this year (on offense or defense) is Jermaine Eluemunor, who is only 30 and could conceivably get a new contract to stay with the Giants. The two veteran QBs he signed are a one-year rental and a two-year backup to hold the fort and mentor Jaxson Dart. Greg Van Roten is a stopgap, as is Roy Robertson-Harris (though Andre Patterson may see that differently). Chris Manhertz is a blocking tight end. The Giants have no Von Miller (36), no Bobby Wagner (35).

Peters was a finalist for the Giants’ GM position back in 2022. If the Giants had hired him rather than Schoen, would he have taken the same approach that he did with the Commanders? He would have had the No. 5 and No. 7 picks, but there was no Jayden Daniels in that draft, and no starting QB with staying power at all. We’ll never know. What we do know is that the Giants have an extremely young core. If Dart becomes the answer at QB, we may see Schoen modify his approach to roster building and salary cap compliance as soon as next season. And if not, then maybe the year after, because second contracts for Nabers, Dart, and Carter will inevitably require void year cap magic. This year, though, I’ll be content with signs of progress from this very young roster.