The offensive line is young, says the general manager.
“And they are talented, and things take time,” said GM of the giants, Dave Gettleman, on Tuesday.
Well, the Giants’ offensive line is not so young if Kevin Zeitler, who turned 31 on Monday, returns to start on the right guard and Nate Solder, who will turn 33 next month, returns to play in one of the vacancies for tackle after giving up on the 2020 season.
So maybe Zeitler and Solder are not part of the plans for this season.
“I’m not implying that, ” said Gettleman.
The status of the offensive line is linked to Gettleman as a smartphone to a teenager. He promised to fix it when he was hired in December 2017. Advances have been made and improvements are evident. Fixed? No way. Not yet.
Gettleman labeled his offensive line as young because, he explained, “when your center, your left guard and your left tackle are newbies, basically, you are young.” This was the case in 2020, when the initial left tackle, Andrew Thomas was a rookie, the center pivot, Nick Gates, was an inexperienced third-year player working on the pivot for the first time and the left guard, Shane Lemieux, was a rookie who passed to the starting lineup at the expense of Will Hernandez, who was essentially eliminated in the second half of the season.
The Giants will be younger in the line if Matt Peart goes into action. Peart, a 2020 third round recruiting from Connecticut, played 11 games as a rookie, making a start, and ended with 150 snaps, or 14.8 percent of offensive snaps, often replacing a series or two for the veteran Cam Fleming on the right tackle.
Gettleman said “I am, yes” when asked if he would be comfortable with Thomas and Peart, a pair of sophomore players, as starting strikers this season.
“When [Peart] he played, he played well, he played very well, ” said Gettleman. “At some point you have to let the children play. ”
This can be a bad omen for the weld. He is a cancer survivor and his son is undergoing cancer treatment, which is why he chose to give up in 2020 instead of playing amid a global pandemic and concerns about COVID-19. Solder is expected to have $ 16.5 million in the salary cap. Releasing it would save $ 6 million at the Giants, but it would also cost $ 10.5 million in dead money.
The Giants still don’t know if Solder wants to continue his career. What seems certain is that it will not be on the list at its current price.
“Look, I’m not going to speak for Nate,” said coach Joe Judge. “I spoke to Nate and, to be honest with you, most of our conversations have nothing to do with football. I talked to Nate a lot since the end of the season, I just checked with him in terms of how the year went, how his family is doing, how his son is doing and how he is personally. I had a lot of conversations, I talked a little about football. … There are other areas in our building that are also in conversation with Nate. When the time comes to resolve all of this, we will know. These things don’t all happen in one day and we’ll see where it all goes. ”
Zeitler is a robust professional who rarely misses a blink of an eye, but was not selected for a Pro Bowl in his nine-year career. He is the team’s most consistent offensive striker and is scheduled to have $ 14.5 million in the salary cap. Releasing it, which could happen, would save the Giants $ 12 million.
One way to mitigate the impact of Zeitler’s limit is to extend his contract by giving him prorated bonus money to reduce his 2021 limit number. It doesn’t seem that Gettleman believes this is a smart approach with any player.
“The goal of better managing the limit is to get flat contracts,” said Gettleman. “If a guy has a three-year contract with $ 45 million, you would like to have a maximum limit of $ 15 million every year, that’s the goal. After starting restructuring and renegotiation, you usually upload them to the back end. What you’re doing is kicking the can. It depends on how much pain you want to deal with. Some teams, philosophically, simply say no, they restructure and some people do not. It is a philosophical conversation, but it is not a good place to arrive, to constantly restructure and renegotiate. ”