The New York Giants have primarily been fishing at the shallow end of the free agent pool this off-season, their only (monetarily) significant signings being tight end Isaiah Likely (three years, $40 million) and linebacker Tremaine Edmunds (three years, $36 million). That may sound like a lot of money to some, but each one is a few million less per year than Wan’Dale Robinson signed for, and let’s not even talk about Jaxon Smith-Njigba, whose $42.15 million per year deal exceeds in one season what Likely or Edmunds will see over the life of their contracts, if indeed they collect the full amount.
Of course signing one’s own free agent to a second contract is different from bringing in a new player who has never played with his new teammates or been coached by his new coaches. That unknown element makes every external free agent signing a significant risk.
How much of a risk has been studied by Bill Barnwell in a new piece for ESPN. Barnwell’s analysis is subjective. For each of 500 free agents, he assigns a grade of 0 (disaster) to 6 (All-Pro caliber), based on his assessment of what each player was before signing vs. after given what was expected. He uses Robinson as his example to explain his grading system. Robinson’s four years, $70 million with $38M guaranteed makes him the 23rd largest AAV for NFL wide receivers and is “pretty standard” for a top-50 free agent according to Barnwell. This is what Barnwell says he’d have to do to achieve his different grades:
- 6: 1,400 yard seasons on a yearly basis, which of course Robinson has never been close to.
- 5: High-end WR2 to low-end WR1, consistently approach 1,200 yards, make Pro Bowl or be in the discussion
- 4: Steady starter, consistently produce 1,000 yards, be one of the best WR2s in the NFL
- 3: Lives up to expectations – 850-900 yards, a good WR2, stays healthy
- 2: Disappoints, falls out of the starting lineup, misses meaningful time to injury
- 1: Seriously underwhelms, much time missed due to injuries, benched, etc.
- 0: Negligible or negative value: Poor performance, injured most of the time, replacement-level
For the years 2013-2022 Barnwell analyzes the top 50 free agents in each class, i.e., 500 in all. Here are his stats:
Courtesy of ESPN
The average grade is 2.26. That’s pretty shocking. It’s worth remembering, though, that most of the best players in the NFL never get to free agency, and post-free agency performance has a downward bias in the sense that relatively few good players get better after switching teams (as we will see, though there are exceptions like Sam Darnold) while a significant number don’t reproduce their earlier success due to injury.
Success (defined by Barnwell as a grade of 3 or higher) is more or less likely as a function of position:
Courtesy of ESPN
So good move, Giants, signing safety Ar’Darius Washington for one year and $3 million, though he would not meet Barnwell’s top 50 threshold for considering free agents. The Giants this year, per Spotrac, have signed three free agents who do fall into Barnwell’s top 50 category: Likely ($13.3M AAV), Jermaine Eluemunor ($13M AAV), and Edmunds ($12M AAV). All of them fall into the middle of the pack as far as positions who produce well in their second contract, but the numbers are sobering: 33.3-42.2% success rate).
What are the best positions at which to sign free agents? Well, other than safety, defensive tackle and interior offensive line. Which gives me a chance to repeat my minority view that the Giants need to sign a right guard and a defensive tackle before I will consider the roster better than the 2025 roster. (Today’s signing of Sam Roberts is a nice little move, but he only has a couple of hundred snaps under his belt. I’d sleep better if Calais Campbell was on the roster.)
Barnwell also discusses the 30 free agents with the biggest contracts during the 2013-2022 period that he analyzes. The Giants have three entries in that group, and it’s not pretty:
- No. 9: Olivier Vernon, 5 years, $85M. Grade: 2 (disappointing)
- No. 12: Kenny Golladay, 4 years, $72M. Grade: 0 (disastrous)
- No. 29: Nate Solder, 4 years, $62M. Grade: 2 (disappointing)
So say what you want about Joe Schoen, but it was Jerry Reese and Dave Gettleman who made the biggest wrong free agent bets as Giants’ GM. That said, the Giants have made some great free agent signings in the past, e.g., Kerry Collins, Antonio Pierce, Kareem McKenzie, Snacks Harrison, and Plaxico Burress until he threw away his shot. This coming season, they will have recent free agent signings ostensibly as starters or close to it at two cornerback positions (Paulson Adebo and Greg Newsome), at least one safety (Jevon Holland) if not two (Jason Pinnock), one linebacker (Edmunds), tight end (Likely), wide receiver (Darnell Mooney), and fullback (Patrick Ricard), as well as returning free agent Eluemunor. Barnwell’s study suggests that fewer than half of those will be successful; of the three mentioned above who were Giants in 2025, only Eleumunor was clearly successful. Barnwell didn’t include special teams but there’s a good chance that Jordan Stout will be an upgrade.
The problem with the upper end of the market is that statistically, I would guess that players who leave the team that drafted them more often than not had career years just before leaving. There is a tendency in most of us to assume that improvement in play predicts future success, while Barnwell’s statistics (success rates well below 50%) suggest that a recent outlier year is really more often a true outlier than a sign of an upward trend. Wan’Dale Robinson will be an interesting case study – was 2025 a harbinger of his future, a product of him finally having quarterbacks who could exploit talents that hadn’t previously been tapped, or was it truly just an outlier? The Schoen-Harbaugh-Aponte triumvirate hasn’t made any such big bets this month. Rather they made a big bet in the other direction by letting him walk. I don’t mind bets like that; I just don’t want to hear the MetLife PA announcer in Game 1 saying, “Starting at right guard, Josh Ezeudu (or Evan Neal).”
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