After being released Monday by the Raiders, is ex-NY Giants cornerback Prince Amukamara a fit for the team this season?
Prince Amukamara is now a free agent again at age 31 entering his tenth season in the league. He notably started his career with the NY Giants as the team’s first-round draft choice all the way back in 2011 (man, does time fly or what?).
Prince made an instant impact as a rookie in the team’s Super Bowl 46 run, nabbing an interception in his first career NFL game. He only played in 55 out of 80 games for the NY Giants for five seasons until his rookie contract expired in 2015 as injuries likely played a major part in Big Blue not retaining him.
He was always a solid player with a great attitude and football IQ. However, he struggled to stay healthy and played only one fully-healthy season with the GMEN.
Prince went on to sign with the Jaguars in free agency and spent one season with them before joining the Bears where he’s spent the last three seasons.
He signed a deal with the Raiders earlier this offseason but was released Monday as the team headed in a younger direction at corner. Since leaving the Giants in 2015, Prince has stayed relatively healthy only missing six games in four years.
He’s established a reputation for being a smart, surefire tackler (94.4% successful tackle rate over the last two seasons), and physical corner on the outside that can be a solid CB2 option for any NFL team.
Amukamara provides almost a decade’s worth of experience, veteran’s leadership as a Super Bowl champion, and can create turnovers and deflect passes.
Where does the NY Giants cornerback group currently stand?
The NY Giants secondary is still in flux right now as the coaching staff tries to figure out who belongs and where they fit.
Big Blue swooped in on free agency and signed Logan Ryan to an incentive-laced one-year deal. Ryan’s arrival provides a much-needed veteran leader to bolster the team’s young secondary, and his versatility will be mesh well with Joe Judge’s and Patrick Graham’s philopsophies.
After Xavier McKinney’s foot injury, the defense lost a talented player at safety. It remains to be seen where Ryan will play but I expect to see him in a variety of roles including safety, slot cornerback, and some outside cornerback.
Defensive coordinator Pat Graham will surely use him as a chess piece all over the defense alongside Julian Love. At this point in his career, Ryan projects mainly as a safety but he did play a fair amount of outside cornerback on a solid Titans team in 2019.
However, the NY Giants cornerback unit is very suspect right now. The team is going into the season with James Bradberry locking down the CB1 role which is fine, but everything behind him is in question.
Can Corey Ballentine do a good/competent job as a starting boundary cornerback with limited experience? Can Darnay Holmes blossom as a rookie and hold down the starting slot/nickel role? Behind them, can other guys support the unit as depth and backups?
This all remains to be seen. With no proven experience playing together on the field, the concerns are valid and legitimate.
The organization’s best route would be to sign another veteran boundary cornerback who will come at a fair rate and help out the team while mentoring the group’s young and promising players.
Why the NY Giants should bring back Prince for 2020
Simply put, the NY Giants still need more help at cornerback in order to really be a competitive, good unit in 2020. The passing game has become far too important in today’s NFL and teams have picked the Giants secondary apart much too easily the last few years.
With their pass-rushing group projecting to be near the bottom of the league in terms of talent, a quality secondary could help mask a ton of their deficiencies.
It’s time this group has a share of steady, veteran players that won’t have miscommunication issues, complete breakdowns, and have no ability to make a tackle or a play on the ball.
Prince Amukamara can provide all that and will round out a veteran trio alongside Bradberry and Ryan. He is one of the league’s best tackling cornerbacks and has an eye-openingly low 5.4% missed tackle percentage.
Even better, the fit seems to be a match. Prince is a natural #2 cornerback at this point in his career who can come at a cheap rate. At 6’0”, 205 pounds, ‘The Prince’ surely has the size to compete and hold his own on the outside.
The Las Vegas Raiders signed him to a one-year, $1.2 million deal this offseason so price shouldn’t be an issue for either side.
After being cut so close to the start of the regular season by the Raiders, Amukamara can’t realistically expect to attract much more than that on the open market this late in the offseason and he has already hinted he’d love a NY Giants reunion.
After failing to finalize a deal for Ross Cockrell earlier this summer, the Giants should turn to another ex-Giant and stabilize the team’s trio of starting cornerbacks.
By signing Amukamara, the team can have two solid veteran corner options, a promising slot cornerback in Holmes, and then developmental corners in Ballentine, and the newcomers behind him.
Alongside Logan Ryan and Love who can then safely play all over the field without causing a liability anywhere else, this provides the defense the maximum versatility and depth the team desires to stifle and trick opposing offenses.
This will also be the NY Giants’ first year without a player from the 2011 Super Bowl 46 team. NY should make the fans feel good and bring home The Prince!