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Had the New York Giants and general manager Dave Gettleman not re-signed defensive lineman Leonard Williams to a long-term deal, they would be the NFL’s laughingstock right now.
Every writer, pundit and fan would be raking them over the coals for a wasted trade investment and a massive franchise tag number. But the Giants avoided those jokes by reeling Williams in on a substantial three-year deal.
Not to be left out in the dark, pundits are playing the other side to that coin now, criticizing the Giants and Gettleman for doing the exact thing they’d have also been criticized for not doing.
Touchdown Wire has already named Williams one of the worst free agent signing in the NFL, and now ESPN’s Bill Barwell is piling on.
Barnwell recently broke down what he views as the league’s worst free agent signings and checking in at No. 5 on the list is Leonard Williams.
To put Williams’ deal in context, the list of defensive linemen who top $63 million over the first three years of their deal isn’t long, as Joey Bosa, Khalil Mack, DeMarcus Lawrence, Frank Clark and Aaron Donald are the only guys who qualify. They each had more impressive track records before their respective deals than Williams. Sacks don’t tell the whole story, and he has always had impressive knockdown totals, but this is a player who averaged 3.5 sacks per season before his 11.5-sack total in 2020.
Williams is a good player. Few linemen can bounce around the line, hold up against the run and threaten offensive linemen from any sort of alignment. He can do that at his best, which is why the Giants were so interested in him in the first place. This deal pays him like he’s a perennial Defensive Player of the Year candidate, though, and I’m not even sure he was that guy in 2020.
Barnwell went on to discredit Williams’ sack totals, noting that six came over two games and that some were the result of being unblocked. The same likely applies to all (or most) of the league’s top edge rushing talent, but I digress…
We made the argument in 2019 that the sack totals were a bit overrated in the context of overall value and we stand by that. And what makes the argument against Williams even more laughable is that the same people who criticize his sack totals previously criticized Gettleman for allegedly ignoring analytics (which devalues sacks as a singular metric). So which is it?
Williams was considered by many to be a top 5 or top 10 talent in free agency and among the best defensive linemen available. The Giants went out and got the job done on a deal that’s going to look far less expensive in just a few short years.
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