The Giants confirmed their signing of left tackle Nate Solder to a four-year, $62MM deal, and in so doing, announced former first-round pick Ereck Flowers will move to right tackle.
The news doesn’t come as a complete surprise. Flowers had to play somewhere after all (unless New York intended to trade or release him), so the only question was whether he would shift to guard or right tackle. The former first-round pick was considered a guard prospect by many during the 2015 pre-draft process, but Flowers will stay at tackle, only on the right side.
“As soon as we announced the signing of Nate, [head coach] Pat [Shurmur] spoke with Ereck,” general manager Dave Gettleman said, per John Healy of the New York Daily News. “He called him on the phone to talk to him and said, ‘Listen, we’re going to move you to right, and at the end of the day, the five best offensive linemen play.’ That’s where they left it, and Ereck was fine on the phone.”
Although he’s only 23 years old, Flowers already has plenty of NFL experience, as he’s started 46 games for the Giants over the past three years. He’s never been effective, however: 2017 marked his best campaign to date, but that only resulted in Flowers grading as the league’s No. 54 tackle among 81 qualifiers, per Pro Football Focus.
Contractually, Flowers’ position change doesn’t have any immediate effects. New York needs to decide on his 2019 fifth-year option by early May, but his move to right tackle won’t change anything. Fifth-year option values — like franchise tags — don’t have different values for tackles and interior linemen, let alone left and right tackles.
Hope he finally finds a spot there where he is comfortable and productive.
I agree, I was hoping they’ll move him to guard, I think he could become really good there.. fingers crossed on right tackle, it would get great if he works out.
Going to be interesting if Barkley and Nelson are there at 2. I’d go Nelson just bc their OLine has been sooooooooooo bad.
Barkley + Beckham + Engram = doesn’t matter who your QB is your putting up some points
Will be hard to score points when Eli keeps getting hit/sacked and the running game has no room/holes.
Their offensive line is already ten times better than what it was. Flowers played RT until his second year at Miami and was better suited to play RT all along. The Giants foolishly drafted him to play LT and had chances to move him back to RT, passing up on Russell Okung and others in previous offseasons, just to keep Flowers at LT.
The only worry I have is he hasn’t played RT since 2012. However, even with his improvement (it wasn’t much), he wasn’t suited for LT. Omameh should give him a run for his money too. If someone could get John Jerry off the damn line, that would be great as he’s just awful.
If Orleans Darkwa can average 4.4 yards per carry behind last years giants offensive line and without Beckham to offset the D id be pretty confident that Barkley could be very successful considering the line will be somewhat better and Beckham is back