NY Giants: Aldrick Rosas contract situation could get tricky

Aldrick Rosas being a restricted free agent heading into 2020 makes him no lock to return to the NY Giants next season.

After a 2018 Pro Bowl season, NY Giants kicker Aldrick Rosas seemed destined for a long, successful career at the NFL level. It was easy to write off his struggles as a rookie in 2017 after seeing the big-legged kicker nail field goals all season long.

However, now that Rosas seemingly regressed to 2017 form in 2019, it makes his current contract situation all the more tricky. Having accrued three years of NFL service time and playing out his undrafted free agent contract, Rosas’ future now is in the hands of the NY Giants and what they decide to tender him as.

Big Blue’s options are currently to tender him as a first-round, second-round, or original-round player. Obviously, the higher the team chooses the tender him the more money he’d make, and the higher the tender the higher the compensation any team that wanted to sign him would have to give up.

The first-round tender is out of the question, as no team is going to give up a first-rounder for any kicker and the team is not going to pay $4.1M for Rosas. The second-round tender is more feasible as it carries a $2.9M cap hit, and that level tender would almost guarantee he’d be back as no team is going to give up a second-round pick for him, either.

Where things get tricky is if the Giants attempt to sneak him by as an ‘original round’ tender. Since Rosas was an undrafted free agent, the interested team would have to give up zero draft compensation to attempt to sign him. In essence, the Giants would just have the right to match any offer, and maybe there’s a kicker desperate team out there that comes in heavy with an offer.

That tender comes with a $1.9M cap hit, which appears to be more in line with where Rosas is at right now. But, is $1M worth Big Blue getting cute with its kicker position? Most would say no to that (me included), but maybe Gettleman and company don’t even have Rosas in their plans anymore after last year.

Rosas regressed to 70% of kicks made in 2019 and missed three extra points (87% made total), which is much more in line with his 2017 numbers (72% of FG’s and 89% of XP’s – he missed 4 that year). The former Southern Oregon kicker lit the world on fire in 2018, hitting 32-33 FG’s (97%) and 31-32 XP’s (96.9%) en route to a second-team All-Pro berth.

The most alarming part about Rosas’ 2019 season was that he mainly struggled from medium distances, which should be a kickers bread and butter. With so many teams looking for capable kickers, I’d be inclined to offer him that second-round tender and give him one more year to show he’s more 2018 than anything else.

We’ll see what happens, but offering him that original-round tender opens up many doors for Rosas no longer being a NY Giants.