NY Giants far from only team to fail to strike a deal with franchise player
As bad as the Leonard Williams franchise tag situation ended up for the NY Giants, 11 other teams ended up being in the same scenario as the deadline to reach contract extensions for tagged players has now passed.
As most NY Giants fans have now finally come around to the Leonard Williams trade being a disaster due to the two sides being unable to reach a contract extension before the July 15th deadline, they were far from the only team in the NFL to be in that boat.
While it’s usually never a good thing for a team not to be able to strike an extension with their franchise player by the deadline, the NY Giants situation is obviously the worst of the bunch as they gave up a top 70 pick in a rebuilding, 2-6 season for that exact reason and failed miserably in their attempt to get an affordable long-term deal done which was the goal from the start.
As I said from the beginning, this trade had all the signs of being one of the worst ever made in the history of the franchise for a variety of reasons.
However, due to this large – and way more than the average – number of team’s unable to reach a deal with their franchise-tagged player, I’m willing to cut GM, Dave Gettleman, a little slack because this is the funkiest offseason of all-time due to COVID-19 and the uncertainty of the season playing out.
Teams also were likely hesitant to give out big-time extensions due to the state of the economy and the massive amounts of money NFL franchises are sure to lose due to their being no fans/ticket sales, parking fees, and concession/jersey sales even if there even is a season.
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So while by no means does this excuse the monstrosity of the trade Gettleman decided to make for an impending free agent in a lost season, it cuts him just a bit of slack as this is a record-high number of players (via ESPN) playing under the tag in 2020.
The final nail in the dagger that makes the situation even worse is that the team and Williams gave up on coming to an agreement days before the deadline, putting an exclamation point on how messed up this situation was from the get-go as it shows how far apart the two sides ended up being.