A midseason ankle injury in 2023 moved Evan Neal out of the Giants’ starting lineup, and the former top-10 pick’s hopes of regaining his starting right tackle job did not produce a serious charge last summer. As a result, the Giants admitted partial defeat on their former No. 7 overall investment by greenlighting a much-rumored position change.
Neal is now a guard, and he took plenty of reps inside during the team’s offseason program — which wrapped this week. Although the Giants could well use the same starting five O-linemen they did in 2024, Neal is expected to be heard from during final training camp on a rookie contract.
The Giants re-signed Greg Van Roten, giving him a slight pay bump (one year, $3.25MM) to return. But the journeyman guard is heading into an age-35 season. A scenario in which the team’s primary 2024 right guard serves as Neal insurance has also emerged. Neal took plenty of reps at left guard during the offseason program, per The Athletic’s Dan Duggan, as the team managed Jon Runyan Jr.‘s return from two ankle surgeries. Once Runyan returns, the LG job is his. Van Roten’s RG job, however, should be considered in play for Neal, Duggan adds.
Giving Neal extensive work opens the door to the Giants preferring him to win the right guard gig, with Van Roten — who received $2.45MM guaranteed — in place in case the Alabama alum cannot stick the landing on his position change. Such aims have not reached desired conclusions for the Giants in the past, however. The team had hoped 2022 third-round pick Joshua Ezeudu would win a starting guard job in 2023, but that did not take place. (Ezeudu remains on Big Blue’s roster as a backup option, but O-line drafting has not been this regime’s forte.) Neal fared poorly as a right tackle and brought injury risk during his first three seasons, leading to the team predictably declining his $16.69MM fifth-year option.
Van Roten started all 17 games for the Giants last season and the Raiders in 2023. The Giants made the interesting move of importing the right side of the 2023 Raiders’ O-line last year, signing both Eluemunor and Van Roten. The latter, however, did not arrive until training camp — when it became clear Neal’s route back to RT had stalled. Pro Football Focus assigned Van Roten a mid-pack grade among guard regulars (42nd) in 2024.
Neal returned to the lineup at right tackle during the second half of last season, as the Giants kicked Eluemunor to LT as a belated post-Andrew Thomas solution. PFF graded Neal 58th (out of 81 qualified options) at tackle last year. That marked a step up from 2022 and ’23, when the advanced metrics site viewed Neal as the NFL’s second-worst tackle. Thomas (once he returns from Lisfranc surgery) and Eluemunor are entrenched at tackle, and James Hudson is now the swingman. Neal is returning to a position he has not played since his freshman year at Alabama; he was a 13-game RG starter for the Crimson Tide in 2019. Some viewed guard as his eventual destination, though the Giants resisted this position change for years.
As the Giants attempt to make the starter-to-bullpen-like Neal switch, they may also be readying Van Roten for potential swing duty. The 2012 UDFA, who stopped through the CFL for two seasons, took some first-string center reps during minicamp, Duggan notes in a separate piece. Mostly a guard as a pro, Van Roten took 138 center snaps last season and logged 159 there for the 2022 Raiders. Former second-round pick John Michael Schmitz has not established himself as a reliable presence just yet. If Neal supplants Van Roten at RG, the latter would stand to be the first option to replace Schmitz — PFF’s 36th- and 28th-ranked center, respectively, in 2023 and ’24 — falters this year.
Brian Daboll said (via the New York Post’s Zach Braziller) Neal has transitioned well inside thus far, though O-line competitions do not truly take shape until pads come on in training camp. This will be a storyline to follow in New York, as Braziller adds the Giants hope a Mekhi Becton– or Ereck Flowers-like rejuvenation at guard can commence. Both players earned themselves $10MM-per-year contracts after guard conversions. After a poor tackle career, Neal looks to have a big opportunity to boost his value ahead of a 2026 free agency bid.
Why? Has to be because they foolishly spent a first rounder on him. You could see in college he had heavy feet and just didn’t project well to the league, let alone being a high first round pick.
“Has to be because they foolishly spent a first rounder on him.”
It’s revisionist to say the pick was foolish. Practically everyone had him as one of the best, if not the best lineman in the draft. And many experts gave the Giants high marks for their picks. The pick was a good one. They just haven’t developed him and he’s been a massive bust.
You sound like the surgeon who said “The operation was a success but the patient died”…lol.
No, he happens to be right. He was widely considered to be a top pick, but when injuries and bad coaching occur, it’s difficult to develop someone. Neal certainly holds some blame here too. Some reports that he’s not as fit as he could be but if you don’t think Saban gave the thumbs up on him to the Giants, you’re sadly mistaken
That’s the problem. Widely seen by who? Dumb pundits who regularly feed you the same BS somebody else told them because they don’t know? Did you actually watch him yourself in college? Did you look at his feet and athleticism? It’s just like that dumb Eric Flowers pick before him, but even Flowers was more athletic than him, he was just a bad player. Neal was topped out athletically and didn’t project well to the league.
Nothing revisionist on my part. Maybe on yours. I’ve been watching that kid since before he played in college when he was a prized recruit. He was lumbering with heavy feet and not a first round pick. Maybe turn off the draft pundits and watch for yourself.
I watched, count me as one who was fooled. I can’t remember anyone-pundit, former player, coach, whatever-who didn’t also think that Neal was the best, or one of the best, players in college football. He was an utter beast at Alabama.
When New York picked Neal, badly needing a tackle answer alongside the late developing Andrew Thomas, most people (including myself) thought they could finally have a stable bookend offensive line for Jones (or whomever took over for Jones). Turns out, we were incredibly wrong. I know that Bobby Johnson changed Neal’s fundamentals to fit that system, but it seems that Neal also is just a bit of a plodder.
That’s what I mean, pundits aren’t reliable. They repeat whatever people tell them. Just look at his “scouting reports” for consumer consumption that still proclaimed he was the best tackle in the draft despite their own words. All of them mention how he wasn’t a great athlete and how his feet get stuck in mud on pass rushes. They all mention how big he was. Being big doesn’t make you an elite NFL tackle, sweet feet and athleticism does. Dominant run blocker but not a good pass blocker. Speed rushers give him trouble. That’s just Googling it real fast. However, these same people were saying he was can’t miss despite those red flags. Reminds me of that Tyree Wilson pick for the Raiders in 2023. People talking about upside when you even glanced at his tape at Texas Tech, it was him racking up numbers on JAGs and looking big, slow, and unathletic. Problems getting off the snap, same problem he still has two years into his career. However, in that draft hype, you had dum pundits regurgitating what somebody told them that he was better than Will Anderson, laughable if you even looked at the two on tape side by side.
I mean, I’m not arguing that pundits or fans are often wrong (and for I record, I agree about the Wilson/Anderson dynamic), but Neal was a pretty well regarded pick at the time. He fooled a ton of people. Even considering how questionable the Giants’ offensive line coaching is, it was still pretty incredible how poorly he’s done. A few red flags didn’t fully predict him being the worst or one of the worst tackles in football. Pretty amazing, and not in a good way. If you saw it, you saw more than most of us did.
Yeah, but I think the pundits influence the public, and they often don’t know anything. Sometimes it’s subconscious, and you’ll see people regurgitating what all these pundits have written or said. I just watched him. He never looked like an elite NFL lineman from how plodding he was. Not to mention his weight problems. This dude regularly flirted with 400 pounds while at Alabama and looked every pound of it on the field.
He reminded me of King Dunlap who used to be with the Eagles, who sucked too but who also was big. I don’t think the Eagles took him with a high pick though.
I remember King. He wasn’t terrible, but not great, either. Average at best, I’d say, which is impressive given his size. He had some bright spots, but an equal number of down spots, and at the time, Philly played in a tough pass rush division and overall conference (Dunlap faced the likes of Demarcus Ware, Justin Tuck, Clay Matthew’s, and Richard Seymour all in his rookie year alone, with mixed results.PFF wrote a fun article about it). Neal I’d put as worse by comparison.
But yeah, GMs commonly think that they can fix issues guys have with fundamentals or size, but it usually doesn’t work. Sometimes it does-the Colts managed to teach Raimann to be an NFL player pretty much entirely at the pro level, and the Eagles turned Mailata into a high quality tackle-but it’s pretty hard to do.