• The Giants deserve credit for their creativity in offloading defensive lineman Leonard Williams—because in getting the return for him that they did, the devil was in the details.
On the surface, getting a 2024 second-rounder and ’25 fifth-rounder for Williams, a versatile and good-not-great player, seems like a masterstroke. And it is just in a way you may not realize. As part of the deal, the Giants agreed to knock the remainder of Williams’s base for ’23 down to the minimum (more than $9 million of the $10 million he has left in a contract year) and pay the difference in a signing bonus.
That essentially means the Giants bought higher picks, which, to me, is a creative and smart way to use cap space that you’ve already spent, and real money that you’ve budgeted to spend.
In a lot of ways, this deal is set up like the Rams’ deal to land Von Miller in 2021, when the Broncos agreed to eat most of Miller’s remaining money for the year in exchange for Los Angeles sweetening the package going back to Denver—it wound up being ’22 second- and third-round picks. In case you’re scoring at home, the Broncos wound up with linebacker Nik Bonitto, center Luke Wattenberg and linebacker Drew Sanders with those selections.
