How Giants GM Joe Schoen is Trying to Navigate Through a Bad Salary Cap Situation

Here are some ways Giants general manager Joe Schoen has been trying to stretch limited salary cap space through the season while keeping the Giants competitive.

Author:
Patricia Traina
Publish date:
Nov 6, 2022 8:47 AM EST

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New York Giants

The last thing New York Giants general manager Joe Schoen wants to do is restructure another contract this year to create more cap space.

Unfortunately, he might not have a choice, as New York only has $2,836,840 of cap space left, according to Over the Cap, not nearly enough to cover the operating expenses associated with standard practice squad elevations, practice squad signings, and injury replacements for the remaining nine game of the 2022 season.

"Will we get through the season without having to push a little bit more down the road? We’re not trending that way," he said last week. "These practice squad elevations cost you; these players going on IR (injured reserve) cost you money. I’m crossing my fingers that we don’t have to do it again, but we’ll see.

"We got nine games left. I would like to not have to convert any more money. That was the last scenario from when I got here; we just had to do it. Regardless if we do, hopefully, it’s minimal, and we’ll still be in good shape going into 2023."

If Schoen does have to convert money--and it's virtually certain he will--the only place he can look at is receiver Kenny Golladay's $13 million base salary (of which $6.5 million has already been paid).

Before Schoen gets to that point--and he's probably going to wait as long as possible before doing so to minimize further damage--let's look at some of the ways he has been trying to stretch what little cap space he has left before resorting to a tactic he doesn't want to have to do.

Playing Short Staffed

NFL rules allow for a 53-man roster from which seven inactives must be designated (usually based on health status). Teams are also allowed to have two standard practice squad elevations per week.

At times, however, the Giants have gone "short-staffed" by leaving a roster spot open on the 53. That has meant that instead of the full number of inactive, the Giants could afford to de-activate one or two fewer players, depending on how many spots they had open.

It's not the ideal way to do things, but when a team is short on cap space, this is one way to save a few dollars. And if the weekly game plan allows for the team to go ligher at a position group or two, it makes sense to take this route which, although a gamble if injuries hit durng the game, do yield some cap relief.

Optimizing Practice Squad Elevations

Want to know why safety Landon Collins hasn't been added to the 53-man roster yet? It's probably because he hasn't been elevated from the practice squad three times, the maximum number of elevations per player before he becomes subject to waivers.

This is another example of a cost-saving measure. In Collins's case, he's earning $15,791 per week sitting on the Giants practice squad. If he is elevated, that amount increases to $62,222 less the $15,791, or $46,431 to make up the difference (the increase is based on the minimum salary for a player commensurate with Collins' experience divided by 18 weeks in the season, the bye counting as a week).

That might not look like a lot of money, but if you go back and crunch the numbers for every guy the Giants have elevated from the practice squad, it adds up. This is why you don't see Schoen signing guys from the practice squad (unless it's a dire emergency) until their three elevations are done.

Split Salaries

Typically, players on their rookie deals making the minimum base salary commensurate to their years of experience in the league are paid less if they are not on the active roster (excluding the practice squad) unless they have guarantees in their contract that override that provision (such as what Daniel Jones has in his rookie deal).

Article 26, Sections 1a-b of the CBA shows the splits for eery year of the current CBA:

Let's take Elerson Smith, for example, and assume he doesn't have an exclusion for a split in his contract. Smith is due a 2022 base salary of $825,000. Because he was on injured reserve for the first seven weeks of the season, his weekly payment was $25,277 per week (one eighteenth of $455,000) or $176,944 for the first seven weeks. That's a difference of approximately $143,889 for the first seven weeks from what he otherwise would have earned.

Again, that might not seem like a huge number, it can add upif multiple players go through the same process.

Along those lines, there are players with a per-game roster bonus in their contracts, e.g., $20,000 per game he is active on game day. If the player doesn't meet that criteria, the team receives a cap credit at the end of the year when the final bookkeeping is done.

Receiver Kenny Golladay doesn't have such a clause in his deal, and in retrospect, he probably should have had it considering he was coming off an injury-shortened seasonw hen he signed with the Giants. To be fair, we don't know if the cause was proposed and rejected, but our guess is that the topic never came up once Golladay passed his physical prior to signing with the Giants.

Moving forward, we wouldn't be surprised if Schoen insists that the clause be included for any players who might have had a recent injury history, as it only makes sense to do so. Granted, players and their agents are liekly to push back on such clauses, so it will be interesting to see if the topic even comes up.

Final Thoughts

For those who missed it, Schoen, in his mid-year press conference, spoke about a couple of trades that he tried to make that weren't going to work out.

"Financially, we couldn’t do it; and the team wasn’t going to buy down the money, or if they did, they’d want a higher pick," he said.

(The "buy-down" comment makes one wonder if D.J. Moore of the Panthers or Brandin Cooks of the Texans were among the discussions the Giants had that went nowhere.)

Some criticize Schoen for standing pat, but he made the right decision in the long run. There was no way he was going to give up a Day 1 or Day 2 asset, not with the Giants being several players away from having a stronger roster..

There was also no way that he was in a position to absorb additional money into an already awful cap situation unless the original team helped out--and that wasn't going to happen because, as he said, the original team wanted a higher draft pick.

As for 2023, the Giants are already in the hole for $3,668,912 as far as dead money goes on next year's cap, that being the signing bonus remaining from Kadarius Toney's contract.

They will also have the dead money from Sterling Shepard's deal ($4.25 million) hit their cap and, depending on when they dump Golladay's contract, that's at least another $14.7 million in dead money that will hit their cap.

Still, overall, the cap will be a lot healthier than it is now, likely making for a much happier Joe Schoen.