As the New York Giants continue to fill out their roster after free agency and the NFL draft, the time has come for some belt-tightening and to circle back on unfinished business.
That means sitting down with their two Pro Bowlers who are looking for new contracts — running back Saquon Barkley and defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence.
Barkley was assigned the franchise tag, which will pay him $10.1 million for this season, but he has yet to sign it, instead deciding to angle for a contract extension.
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Lawrence is scheduled to make $12.4 million on his fifth-year option but after seeing the lottery-like contracts handed out to defensive tackles around the league, he has decided to sit out the team’s voluntary offseason program until the Giants come across with a lucrative extension.
The Giants are planning to address both situations and have actually begun the process.
“We’ll talk this coming week now that the draft is over,” Schoen said of the Barkley negotiations. “We’ll reconvene and see if it makes sense or not through dialogue with his representative.”
Schoen said the same deal was in place for Lawrence.
“His representation had a lot of prospects in the draft, and we were focused on the draft in our meetings. Next week, things will calm down a little bit and we’ll circle back up with everybody,” he said.
The Giants’ salary cap situation is dire, to say the least (they’re approximately $2 million under), and would have to cut elsewhere to create the space needed to satisfy both players.
General manager Joe Schoen says that is doable now that the rest of the offseason business has been settled.
“If we need to, we have moves that we can make to free up cap space,” Schoen told reporters after the draft concluded on Saturday night. “So yeah, we are working through some things over the next couple of weeks.”
So, don’t fret. Schoen has gotten just about everything done on his ‘to-do’ list this year and there’s a lot of confidence he’ll get these two deals done as well.
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