Make or Break: Is this the last stand of Evan Neal?

We’ve been building to this over the course of the 2025 offseason, and it seems as though we’ve been heading here for a couple years now.

Will Evan Neal be a member of the New York Giants beyond 2025?

Neal was the second pick made by Joe Schoen as the Giants’ GM, who picked Neal 7th overall in the 2022 NFL Draft. The Giants have one of the best left tackles in the NFL in Andrew Thomas, but the rest of the offensive line had been a massive question for years. The selection of Neal was widely praised, and it was believed that he would give the Giants young, athletic, and talented bookends for the foreseeable future.

That, obviously, isn’t how things worked out.

Instead, Neal has only played 29 of 51 possible games due to injury and has been inconsistent at best when he has played. While injury has obviously disrupted Neal’s development at tackle, the Giants simply can’t afford to devote any more time to hoping he can become a consistent starter there. Instead, they’re settling on Jermaine Eluemunor to reprise his role at right tackle and are moving Neal inside to guard.

This is his last chance to prove that he can be a starting lineman and a long-term piece for the Giants.

In other words, this is truly a make or break year for him.

Why he can make it

The single biggest factor working in Neal’s favor as he moves inside is his raw strength. Neal is a massively powerful man with great grip and core strength that allows him to control defenders in pass protection or distort the line of scrimmage.

Neal is capable of being a bulldozer of a blocker when he plays with proper leverage. He does a great job of getting under defenders’ pads, uncoiling his hips, and running through the block.

And while Neal has gotten better about his hand placement, landing inside his opponent’s framework and seeking inside leverage, he’s strong enough that he can still win the rep even if his placement isn’t ideal. In general, he can at least stalemate defenders even if he doesn’t win the overall leverage battle.

Neal also has plus athleticism for a guard. His movement skills were a source of consternation at tackle (more on that in a bit), however he should have good feet for a guard. Neal actually showed much better lateral movement than he was credited when he returned from injury in the second half of 2024. He as able to widen the pocket and match speed rushers around the outside.

At guard, Neal won’t have to cover quite so much ground, which should allow him to quickly get into position against defensive linemen or blitzers attacking the A or B gaps.

Neal is at right tackle in each clip. In the first play, he becomes responsible for the linebacker that walks up to the right B-gap. He’s able to match the linebacker’s speed into the backfield and remove him from the play so Tyrone Tracy could pick up four yards on first down.

In the second play, Neal is matched up against Jadevon Clowney in a Wide-9 alignment. While Clowney isn’t the explosive freak athlete he was a decade ago, he’s still athletic enough to post a pass rush win rate just below that of T.J. Watt (18 percent to 19 percent). Neal was able to hit his land marks and get into position quickly enough to neutralize Clowney’s rush. He also showed quick-enough feet to re-anchor and absorb the power of Clowney’s second effort

Neal has done a tremendous amount of work transforming his body since he last played guard. Back in 2019, Neal carried a fair amount of “sloppy” weight but has since put in the work to build a much more athletic physique.

Thanks to his work, he moves better in space than you may expect from a man who’s listed at 340 pounds.

Here we see him pulling from the back side of the play at the right tackle position all the way across the offensive formation to the left C-gap. He does a good job of getting out ahead of Tracy, laying the block on Erik Kendricks which allows Tracy to pick up seven yards.

That should translate well to a guard position, where pulling is a relatively common way to change the numbers game when running the ball.

All told, Neal has great play strength, plus quickness for a guard, and the athleticism to be a factor pulling or at the second level. He also has longer than average arms at 34 inches (average is 33 inches for both guards and defensive tackles), which is another advantage on the inside.

That’s quite a bit working in his favor, if he can overcome a potential issue that was seen as an asset at tackle.

Why he may not

The major concern for Neal with respect to his move inside to guard is his height and leverage.

As mentioned above, Neal isn’t as un-athletic as his reputation would suggest. He has pretty good speed in the open field and lateral agility when matching speed to the outside. Likewise, he isn’t a heavy-legged waist-bender who simply can’t sink his hips and play with good pad level.

However, he’s tall for a tackle and is exceptionally tall for a guard.

The average height for a guard at the NFL scouting combine is about 6-foot 3 ¹⁄₃ inches tall. It isn’t a coincidence that interior defensive linemen are also about 6-foot-3.

Neal, meanwhile, is 6-foot 7½ inches tall, or more than four inches taller than the average guard. In other words, Neal is roughly three standard deviations taller than the average NFL guard — for those of you playing the home game, he’s in the top 99.7 percentile for height among guards. As a consequence, Neal will have to be incredibly conscientious of, and consistent in, maintaining his leverage and pad level.

If he can’t, his impressive strength is neutralized and interior defenders will be able to get under his pads.

That also brings us to one of the most persistent issues in Neal’s tape at offensive tackle: Redirection.

Neal was typically able to hit his landmarks when kick-sliding against edge rushers. His worst reps, however, came when he would have to suddenly change direction and move back inside to block a different gap. Neal doesn’t have lightning quick feet, but they aren’t egregiously slow either. Instead, his problems seem to come from the fact that he is a long-limbed athlete and a relatively high-cut 6-7. In other words, he has a high center of gravity and needs to gather himself when changing direction.

The fact that he has to gather himself before redirecting back inside can have a few downstream effects.

Obviously, Neal can be slow to react to athletic rushers who execute inside moves. That, in and of itself, can lead to losses and pressure leaking through his gap. Things go from bad to worse if Neal rushes or panics when trying to change direction suddenly. As we’ve see pretty regularly in scouting reports, straightening knees can lead to a cascade of bad outcomes, from loss of balance, to losing leverage, to losing balance. Those, in turn, tend to impact blockers’ hands or movement and lead to particularly ugly losses.

Combined with his sheer height, any loss of leverage from straightening knees lead to very bad losses right in the quarterback’s face.

There’s the added concern of Neal’s height with Russell Wilson at quarterback. Wilson is used to having to play around taller linemen and he features a very high release point that mitigates his own stature. That said, Neal suddenly popping up could clog sight lines and passing lanes over the middle. That could disrupt the offense, even without the prospect of pressure in Wilson’s face.

Final thoughts

Of the various players who are in “make or break” situations, Evan Neal’s is likely the most dire.

He’s in the final year of his contract, and if it doesn’t work out with the Giants, he doesn’t really have much tape he can point to for other teams. If he can’t secure a starting job this year, he’ll likely have to hope he can rehabilitate his career on a one-year deal with another team.

That’s worked out before, but Neal would have to make sure he landed in a good situation, and that might not present itself.

At the same time, the Giants obviously want Neal’s move to guard to pan out. After all, a competent (or even good) starting guard is hardly a good return on the seventh overall pick — but it’s still a lot better than nothing. Neal becoming a starting guard, whether it’s left guard or right, would go a long way towards solidifying the line for the foreseeable future. The Giants may yet have to draft a starter at right tackle if they don’t view Jermaine Eluemunor as a long-term piece, but that’s better than having to find a tackle and a guard (and a center, pending John Michael Schmitz’s own make or break year).

The operative question is whether or not Neal can complete the transition inside, and it’s a thorny one.

Is he just too tall, too big, to be a guard?

There’s a persistent notion that bigger is always better for football players. However different positions demand different traits — you wouldn’t ask Andrew Thomas to play cornerback, nor would you ask Dexter Lawrence to play wide receiver.

And Neal’s height could be a legitimate problem once the pads go on in camp. If he can’t consistently play with good knee bend to counteract his height, he could struggle against defensive tackles’ natural leverage. Likewise, his height could be a problem for the Giants’ quarterbacks and clog passing lanes.

On the other hand, he could be a good guard if his height isn’t a problem.

He has many of the requisite traits to be a solid interior lineman. He has length, strength, power, and quickness — not to mention the necessary bloodymindedness to mix it up with defensive tackles. He’s a good run blocker and has the movement skills to be a reliable blocker. It’s encouraging that Neal took a definite step forward in multiple areas of his game after returning from injury in 2024.

He could yet build on his work in the second half of 2024 and take another step forward at his new position.

But right now, we don’t know and changing positions always adds another layer of questions to projection. One way or the other, we’ll get our answers and they could be consequential for the Giants as well as Neal.