The Giants took a risk by letting Xavier McKinney hit free agency, and the safety ended up bolting for a lucrative deal from the Packers. Before he committed to joining Green Bay, the Giants had “strong interest” in retaining the defensive back, according to Paul Schwartz of the New York Post.
However, the front office was leery of handing McKinney the $17MM average annual value he ultimately earned from the Packers. That $17MM AAV puts McKinney in the top five of the highest-paid safeties in the NFL.
The Giants decided to not place the transition tag on McKinney, a decision that would have cost the team $13.8MM. As Schwartz writes, the Giants decided to not tag the safety in a “show of good faith,” although it ended up biting them when the Packers backed in with the Brink’s truck.
However, McKinney was still willing to honor the Giants’ handshake deal. As Schwartz passes along, the safety “did circle back” with the Giants and provided them an opportunity to match Green Bay’s offer. The Giants ultimately “deemed the price was too high for a safety.” We heard previously that the Giants were not prepared to go higher than the transition tag value, meaning there was like a $3MM AAV gap between the two sides.
While McKinney does not have a Pro Bowl on his resume, he is going into his age-25 season. That separated the Alabama alum from the lot of recently released safeties. Ranking 14th on PFR’s free agents list, McKinney played every snap for the Giants last season. McKinney intercepted three passes, forced a fumble and recorded a career-high 116 tackles in his contract year. He has run into some injury trouble, suffering a foot injury that delayed the start of his career in 2020 and then sustaining injuries in an ATV accident in 2022. These chunks of missed games did not deter the Packers, who made one of the biggest free agency commitments in team history.
In hindsight, they probably should have used the transition tag but it was smart not to match that huge contract he got from the Packers. Oh well. At least they used the money saved to splurge on Burns.
Yeah, this is definitely going to hurt the Giants. Despite ranking near the bottom in pressures (despite ranking highly in blitz percentage), McKinney was somehow the best or near best safety on coverage. Still, that’s a big contract that he got from the Packers, who definitely needed a rang-y safety on the back end.
New York has multiple needs on defense, and that’s a big contract. Still, I think that they’ll feel the loss, at least initially. They probably really wanted to match that deal. Hopefully for the Giants, the Burns-Thibodeaux tandem can take pressure off the secondary and recreate the same effect.
@Ak185: great points. I’m excited to see Burns-Thibs with Okereke and Dexter Lawrence. And I think having a different defensive coordinator will help a lot. Wink was just blitz, blitz, blitz with no adjustments when the other team schemed for that, which frequently put a ton of pressure on the secondary.
Hopefully, they can address safety/secondary in the draft, but like you say, they also have other needs. They need WR and OL, which I assume they’ll shoot for in the first two rounds. Safety maybe in the third round? I don’t know. I don’t think they’re going to draft a QB at #6, but who knows? Their options are open.
I mean, if McKinney gave the Giants the option to match and they declined, they effectively got to use the transition tag without the cap hold and without hurting their comp picks formula.
Good point, @Ming.
Ming gets it
Odd, I wonder if this dude is a problem in the locker room or something.
Pro Bowl? The ultimate fallacy metric of a players true playing ability and instead a metric of popularity and narrative,
$17M per year is too much to pay for a safety in today’s NFL. The Giants made the right decision here. There are a ton of veteran safeties available for 1/3 of this price and will allow the Giants to invest elsewhere.
Losing Saquan is an entirely different story, but until the Giants find a true franchise QB, the skill position players on offense will only get them so far. Sorry to the Daniel Jones fans but he’s not a franchise QB.