Report: NY Giants have deal with Leonard Williams, but with a twist

Reports are coming out about a potential done deal with Leonard Williams and the NY Giants. GM Dave Gettleman may have figured out a way to lower the lost draft compensation, too.

According to Brian Stevens – SNY’s NFL and draft analyst – the NY Giants and Leonard Williams have a ‘handshake’ agreement done on a new contract for the defensive lineman. Many felt the most likely outcome would be Dave Gettleman slapping a franchise or transition tag on Williams, but it appears that may not be the case.

Via Twitter:

Did Dave Gettleman really do something savvy here and end up with Leonard Williams while circumventing the free agency period to lower next year’s given up draft compensation? If true, it’s one of Gettleman’s more shrewd moves and should be applauded. Although it would seem somewhat basic for another GM, Gettleman’s strong suit has not been timing during his tenure with Big Blue.

When the deal was originally made, the Giants agreed to give up a 2020 third-round pick, along with a 2021 fifth-rounder that would become a fourth if Williams was signed. What most of us didn’t apparently know is that the timeline on that was specifically before free agency.

According to Stevens, if Big Blue waits until the clock strikes midnight on free agency they save an entire rounds worth of draft capital.

We’re going to have to wait and see what the compensation looks like, but you can expect it to be much higher than Williams deserves. From the get-go, Gettleman boxed himself into a corner with this trade and almost had to get a long-term deal done to avoid major scrutiny.

Spotrac pegs Williams’ value at $8.2M per season which seems very fair. However, most are speculating that the former USC Trojan and NY Jet will see closer to $15M per season when all is said and done. Hopefully, Gettleman was/is able to land Williams for somewhere in between those two numbers.

My ideal strategy for these negotiations was to have Gettleman risk letting Williams hitting the open market, only for the fifth-year pro to come back and realize what the NY Giants were offering was the same – or better – than what he found on the open market. To me, that was the only possible way out of this mess without giving out a monster deal.

Now, we’ll just have to wait a few more weeks to see how this all really plays out.

It’s important to remember that reports like this come out every year only to turn out false. Still, a credentialed reporter releasing this information adds much more credence to this than just some random rumor.