The Giants are not believed to have initiated extension talks with safety Xavier McKinney, according to Dan Duggan of The Athletic (subscription required). McKinney, a 2020 second-rounder, has accrued three years of service time and is therefore eligible for an extension. If he and the team do not come to terms on a new deal prior to the 2024 league year, he will become an unrestricted free agent (barring the application of the franchise tag).
In his first year as New York’s general manager in 2022, GM Joe Schoen discussed extensions with impending free agents like Saquon Barkley and Julian Love during the bye week. Neither of those negotiations culminated in a new contract, and Barkley was ultimately hit with the franchise tag while Love defected to the Seahawks in free agency. Still, it could be that Schoen prefers to wait until this year’s bye (Week 13) to begin laying the foundation for a second contract for McKinney.
McKinney may also prefer to wait until later in the 2023 season, or even until the end of the season, to engage in talks. In 2022, the Alabama product suffered a broken hand during a midseason ATV accident, and he played in just nine regular season games as a result. His surface-level production naturally dropped as a result of the missed time — for instance, he recorded five interceptions in 2021 versus just one in 2022 — but the underlying metrics also suggested that he took a step back. After earning a strong 75.4 overall grade from Pro Football Focus in 2021 (which included an even better 78.4 coverage score), McKinney was assigned a subpar 57.8 mark in 2022. He also yielded a 93.6 QB rating on passes thrown in his direction last year, which was up significantly from the 72.2 rating he allowed the year before.
As such, his leverage is relatively low at this point, and he may want to take some time to reestablish his value. On the other hand, Duggan suggests that the soon-to-be 24-year-old, who has earned just under $6.5MM through his first three professional seasons and who is due a modest $1.8MM salary in 2023, may be inclined to sign a team-friendly deal in exchange for some financial security. It is unclear what type of payout McKinney will be seeking, though Duggan sees Jalen Thompson‘s three-year extension with the Cardinals — which is worth up to $40MM and which includes $24.5MM in guarantees — as a potential comp.
McKinney remains a key component of the Giants’ defense, and he will be joined by some combination of Nick McCloud, Bobby McCain, Jason Pinnock, and Dane Belton in the defensive backfield. Earlier this year, we learned that McKinney had retained super-agent David Mulugheta, who represents some of the highest-profile safeties in the game.
If he wants to bet on himself he should wait until the end of the season. Go out and play well to secure a big extension comparable to the Jalen Thompson extension.