The new league year and the official start of free agency are just around the corner. On March 13, the NFL’s wildest off-field season begins as teams scramble to find talent on the open market.
The New York Giants will certainly be among the most active given their abundance of roster needs. They also have a large number of their own players hitting free agency, which will create additional turnover.
Recently, Pro Football Focus released their ranking of the top 200 impending free agents and five Giants made the cut. Several former Giants also did.
Defensive lineman Leonard Williams was ranked 16th overall and guard Kevin Zeitler was ranked 32nd overall.
Here’s where the current Giants landed:
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Barkley held out for a short period this past offseason before returning to play on his franchise tag plus a few incentives that he had close to zero chance of earning. Unfortunately for him, the Giants’ season was an abject disaster from the start … that is, until Tommy Cutlets became America’s quarterback for a few weeks.
Barkley is still capable of breaking off an explosive rush at any moment and made several highlight-reel catches in 2023, including a wheel route touchdown that ended with a dive for the pylon in Week 2 against the Arizona Cardinals. There’s no doubt Barkley’s highs are as high as any running back in the game, but the position market is a tricky landscape to navigate in 2024, especially with his missing extended time in three out of the past four seasons.
The good news for Barkley and all free agent running backs this offseason is that the 2024 running back draft class is not perceived to be strong.
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McKinney’s coverage grades as a free safety (81.4) and in the box (79.4) are top-10 marks among safeties in 2023, and there is a big enough sample size of box play despite his general deployment as a deep player. Over the past three seasons, McKinney’s 7.0 yards allowed per target in coverage ranks top-25 among safeties, and his 17 combined interceptions and forced incompletions put him in the top 20.
While he could make more plays at or near the line of scrimmage, he rarely whiffs on open-field tackles. The 24-year-old has missed just 7.8% of his tackle attempts over his career, 11th-best among 89 safeties with at least 100 tackles over the past four seasons, making him a reliable enough last line of defense.
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Jackson cross-trained this offseason for a move to a full-time slot role but ended up moving back out wide after just two games. The first half of the Giants’ season featured an aggressive defense that ranked second in blitz rate but still couldn’t get home on the quarterback with any consistency, leaving their cornerbacks on islands with extremely difficult assignments on a regular basis.
Wink Martindale’s unit turned a corner over the second half of the year, and Jackson looked improved once returning from injury. Injuries have limited Jackson in four of the past five seasons, but he has true inside-outside versatility with good lateral agility and a knack for making plays on the football, often laying out for acrobatic pass breakups after goading quarterbacks into the occasional throw into his coverage area.
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Robinson is still one of the game’s best early-down run stuffers on the interior, nearly impossible to move off his spot as he soaks up double-teams and enables the players around him to play fast and free.
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