NY Giants receive big win with Markus Golden UFA tender window expiring

What are the chances Markus Golden reaches a new or long-term deal with the NY Giants?

At the moment, I’d have to guess Markus Golden isn’t too thrilled with the NY Giants, as due to getting a cold reaction from the market, Big Blue was able to slap a tender on him that there was no way he wanted.

Now, he’s got a choice to either play for the NY Giants for 110% of his 2019 salary, which amounts to a crazy reasonable -for the Giants – $4.2M in 2020.

Surely not what Golden had hoped for when he hit the market coming off a 10 sack season, but he had four months on the open market to find a better deal and somehow couldn’t.

Again, the rest of the league’s foolishness on this issue is a win for the NY Giants.

It might be wise for Joe Judge and Dave Gettleman to sit down with Golden and at least add some performance bonuses or up his overall guarantee slightly to make him more of a happy camper and show the rest of the locker room you get done by when you perform, but they are surely under no obligation to do so.

The team could – and probably will – take a hardline stance with Golden as they now control all the power; Golden isn’t at a place in his career where he can afford to turn away $4.2M and hold out, as he would be returning to an even colder market.

In a perfect world, the brass would give Golden a multi-year extension with little guarantees, something I suggested long ago. It’d give him at least some base to work of greater than the $4.2M he’d be looking at for 2020 with the security of knowing as long as he played well he’d have a home making decent money.

Before the offseason, I predicted that would look something like 4 years for $50M, but there’s no way Golden approached that money on the free-agent market if he had to end up with this deal, as some team would have swooped in and offered him slightly more than what the NY Giants tender was paying – which was my greatest fear all along – but that again somehow didn’t happen.

Now, a contract like three years for $20-25M with half guaranteed sounds like a major win for both sides, even though the NY Giants will probably take the hardline approach with all the negotiating power on their side, again.

Hopefully, a dream scenario gets even better and the team can strike that multi-year deal with him, but either way, the pass rush and defense of the NY Giants got dramatically better today.

We’ll take those type of days around here all week and year long.