Giants General Manager Joe Schoen will be on the clock with the fifth overall pick of the draft in a little more than a week and his plans for that selection were a chief topic of a Tuesday press conference from the team’s facility.
The Giants won’t know exactly who will be available for some time, but former Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love is one of the players that Schoen could be considering when the team is up early in the first round. Schoen said that “we like our running back room” on Tuesday, but didn’t rule out anything involving a player that he thinks brings a lot to the table.
“He’s an offensive weapon,” Schoen said. “He’s not just a running back. He can play on third down, you can split him out. He can catch the ball. Certainly an offensive weapon.”
The prospect of using an early pick on a running back led to a question about whether that would be saying it was a mistake to let Saquon Barkley leave the team as a free agent a couple of years ago. Schoen noted that the Giants now have a quarterback on a rookie deal and a revamped offensive line along with numerous other roster changes that make for a different picture this offseason.
Giants Clips
Giants defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence wants out. The Giants want to keep him.
The sides are talking, General Manager Joe Schoen said to open pre-draft news conference before taking questions.
“We’ve had good conversations with his representatives throughout the last five or six days,” Schoen said, via video from SNY Giants. “Coach [John Harbaugh], [senior vice president of football ops] Dawn [Aponte], myself, we’ve all been in communication, trying to find some resolution.
“I’ll echo what coach said last week: We’d like Dexter to be here. At some point, we’ll come to a resolution here, whatever that may be. We’ll see. But conversations have been really good. They’ve been productive, and again we’ll see what happens down the road. I’m not going to say anymore about it after that, but that’s the update, and that’s really all there is.”
At the same time, Schoen said he will listen to trade offers.
“I’m always going to pick up the phone if a team calls,” Schoen said. “Maybe not to the [extent] that coach said last week that everybody is tradeable. That is my job as General Manager if teams call. It’s a case-by-case basis and what the compensation may be. That’s my job to take into consideration what that looks like, what the compensation looks like, who the player is, how that affects the roster and then try to make the best decision off of that.”
Lawrence is not participating in the offseason program after two offseasons of failing to come to an agreement on a raise for him. He has two years remaining on his deal, scheduled to make $20 million in 2026.
Schoen said the sides do not have a deadline for a resolution.
“I’m not going to get into it if there’s a deadline or not,” Schoen said. “He’s under contract for two more years. We’re not going to put any deadlines on anything. Again, right now productive conversations and we’ll see where it goes.”
Lawrence, 28, has made three Pro Bowls and has totaled 30.5 sacks, five forced fumbles and an interception in his career since the Giants made him the 17th overall pick in 2019.
Bengals left tackle Orlando Brown wouldn’t mind seeing his team make a big swing in the trade market.
Giants defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence was not at the team’s offseason workouts last week after requesting a trade amid a push for a new contract. During an appearance on Up & Adams, Brown said that Lawrence “would make our football team better” when asked about the possibility of the Bengals trading for him.
“Dexter Lawrence is a baller,” Brown said. “I think he’d be even more of a baller in orange and black. I don’t know how that kind of stuff goes necessarily, I don’t have all the answers.”
Lawrence requested a trade because he’d like to rework a contract with two years left on it and hasn’t found common ground with the Giants. Brown doesn’t control the purse strings in Cincinnati and the contract could be a sticking point for them, but they’d also need the Giants to pivot after head coach John Harbaugh said he thinks Lawrence will remain with the team.
The Giants hosted veteran defensive tackle D.J. Reader for a free agent visit on Monday, according to Jordan Schultz of The Schultz Report.
Reader, 31, recently visited the Ravens and is expected to sign with a new team post-draft.
He ranks 40th on PFT’s list of this year’s top free agents.
Giants defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence has requested a trade, but the team wanted to add at the position anyway after ranking 31st against the run in 2025.
Reader started every game for the Lions last season and finished the year with 28 tackles. He also played 15 games for the Lions in 2024 and previously appeared in 105 games for the Bengals and Texans.
He has 328 tackles, 12.5 sacks, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery in his career.
The Giants are adding another quarterback to their roster.
Aaron Wilson of KPRC reports that they have agreed to a deal with Brandon Allen. Jaxson Dart and Jameis Winston are the other quarterbacks under contract for 2026.
The move reunites Allen with Giants quarterbacks coach Brian Callahan. Allen spent last season with the Titans, who fired Callahan as their head coach six games into the season. Allen and Callahan were also with the Bengals at the same time earlier in their careers.
Allen appeared in one game for Tennessee and went 17-of-30 for 72 yards and an interception. He’s also played for the 49ers and Broncos over the course of his NFL career.
In two different rulings issued less than 15 months apart, the internal grievance system created by the NFL and the NFL Players Association found that, essentially, the NFL invited its teams to collude on the issue of fully-guaranteed contracts but the teams did not accept.
The first part is stunning, and in many ways unprecedented as it relates to the NFL. In response to the Deshaun Watson contract (five years, $230 million, fully guaranteed), the league sounded the alarm at the 2022 annual meeting.
From the notes of the presentation made to the teams in March 2022: "[I]f guarantees continue to grow in both amount and number of players, then there’s a risk that they become the norm in contracts regardless of player quality . . . That not only has the potential to hinder roster management but set a market standard that will be difficult to walk back. Of course, all Clubs must make their own decisions. But continuing these trends can handcuff a Club long into the future.”
The teams, per both the arbitrator and the three-person appeal panel, ignored this invitation/advice.
The appeals panel recognized that the teams will never admit to collusion, and that circumstantial evidence is “the coin of the[] realm” when it comes to proving it. The panel, however, found insufficient circumstantial evidence to prove that collusion occurred.
The panel dismissed expert testimony regarding the decrease in signing bonuses and guaranteed salary after the league invited the teams to collude. The panel rejected the basic, commonsensical idea that, if the league invited them to restrict guaranteed contracts and if guaranteed contracts were thereafter restricted, the teams must have followed the league’s advice.
It’s a myopic assessment of the real world that borders on the obtuse. The 32 teams operate as a league. They enjoy an antitrust exemption as to the player workforce through a multi-employer bargaining unit. The Collective Bargaining Agreement allows the teams to give players guaranteed contracts. The mere fact that the league would even broach the subject of the teams choosing to not do something the CBA allows them to do is, as the panel found, “improper.”
What other proof is needed to show that the league and the teams colluded?
Beyond that, the appeals panel acknowledged that the text-message exchange between Chargers owner Dean Spanos and Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill after the Cardinals managed to avoid giving quarterback Kyler Murray a fully-guaranteed contract was “inappropriate.” The panel somehow found that Spanos thanking Bidwill for “staying strong” when it comes to not giving Murray a fully-guaranteed contract was not proof of collusion but of an “isolated incident.”
Some would call that “isolated incident” a “smoking gun.”
The appeals ruling ignores the evidence of internal communications within the Broncos organization regarding their negotiations with quarterback Russell Wilson. From the original arbitration ruling, owner Greg Penner told other members of the team’s ownership group that “there’s not[h]ing in here that other owners will consider off market (e.g. like the Watson guarantees).” Later, Penner told his partners that G.M. George Paton “feels very good about it for us as a franchise and the benchmark it sets (versus Watson) for the rest of the league.”
Why would or should the Broncos care what other owners think? The mere fact that the concern was on the radar screen shows that the Broncos were worried about running afoul of the wink-nod understanding that teams would hold the rope on the issue of fully-guaranteed contracts after the Watson deal.
Although the panel did indeed find that the league invited teams to collude, what choice did it have? The NFL didn’t just say the quiet part out loud. It put it in writing! Anyone who understands how the NFL works knows what the message was, and how it was received. The Spanos-Bidwill texts confirm it, as do the internal Broncos communications.
And while the Ravens, per the panel, did indeed offer quarterback Lamar Jackson a pair of three-year fully-guaranteed contracts, he didn’t accept them. He wanted a five-year, fully-guaranteed deal, like the one Watson had gotten. The Ravens, to paraphrase Spanos, “stayed strong.”
Did the NFL invite the teams to collude? Yes. Did the teams thereafter accept the invitation? Hell yes.
The NFL suggesting that the teams refrain from doing something that the CBA allows them to do should have been enough. The Spanos-Bidwill texts should have been enough. The Broncos’ internal communications should have been enough.
Now that the league has dodged the collusion bullet, the NFL and its teams will learn from the experience. They’ll never put anything in writing that ever could be characterized as proof of collusion. And it will become even harder — if not impossible — for the NFLPA to prove collusion when it happens.
Even if it will happen. Because the facts of the failed grievance show, in our view, that it absolutely did.
One of the top guards in this year’s draft class is visiting with the Giants on Friday.
Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that Chase Bisontis is meeting with the NFC East club. Bisontis is generally projected to be selected at some point in the first two days of the draft.
Bisontis started at right tackle at Texas A&M for most of his freshman season in 2023 and then moved over to left guard for the last two years. He has also had meetings with the Panthers, Dolphins, Eagles, Chargers and Falcons over the course of the pre-draft process.
The Giants signed former Raven Daniel Faalele recently and they have Jon Runyan Jr. back after he filled a starting spot last season.
Shane Bowen is reuniting with Mike Vrabel.
Per Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, Bowen is joining New England’s coaching staff as a defensive analyst.
Bowen, 39, previously worked with Vrabel on the Texans and Titans. He served as Vrabel’s defensive coordinator from 2021-2023 with Tennessee.
Bowen then spent the last two seasons as the Giants’ defensive coordinator. He was fired in November as New York reshaped its coaching staff multiple times during the season.
Giants defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence requested a trade this week and the prospect of a move came up during Jaguars General Manager James Gladstone’s press conference on Thursday.
After Gladstone answered a question about the team’s interest in the defensive tackles in this year’s draft, he was asked if there was thought to making a run at trading for the veteran. Gladstone’s brief answer did not suggest that the Jaguars are in hot pursuit.
“That’s not something we’ve gone into,” Gladstone said. “Obviously he’s under contract with them, so not at liberty necessarily to even talk about it.”
Lawrence wants an upgraded contract and Giants head coach John Harbaugh said earlier this week that he thinks Lawrence will be a member of the team come the fall, so there may not be much reason for the Jags or anyone else to expend energy on chasing a trade. If the outlook in New Jersey changes, however, there could be a number of suitors for Lawrence’s services.
John Harbaugh is bringing another former Raven to the Big Apple.
Per Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, the Giants have agreed to a one-year deal with offensive lineman Daniel Faalele.
Faalele, 26, just completed his rookie contract with Baltimore. He started all 17 games in each of the last two seasons for the Ravens.
He was a fourth-round pick in 2022.
Faalele now gives New York another option to start at right guard. The club brought in Lucas Patrick earlier this week as well.
