New Giants General Manager Joe Schoen inherited a bad salary cap situation from his predecessor Dave Gettleman, and he’s trying to clean it up.
The latest example: Schoen has restructured kicker Graham Gano’s contract to give him $2.63 million of this year’s salary as a signing bonus, as well as adding a void year, according to Jordan Raanan of ESPN.
That creates $1.753 million in cap space this year, but it adds the same cap hit to future years. Schoen has said he views kicking the salary cap can down the road as “a last resort,” but Gano’s contract in particular was one that Schoen couldn’t do much about. Gettleman guaranteed Gano a $3 million salary this season, and Gano actually would have had a bigger 2022 cap hit if he had been off the team than on it.
The good news for the Giants is that Gano has played well in his two years as their kicker, and they may find that they’re happy to keep him around for the length of his contract. Even if Schoen surely wishes he had inherited a contract that gave him more flexibility.
