Darius Slayton's fall from grace happened almost immediately after he signed his three-year contract extension with the New York Giants. The final nail in the coffin took years to be hammered home.
The veteran wide receiver's release from New York felt inevitable, especially after reports surfaced that he was expected to be a healthy scratch in the Giants' Week 1 game against the Dallas Cowboys. The only thing keeping him around after an abysmal preseason was his contract, but the G-Men finally decided that the money wasn't enough.
John Harbaugh made the decision that nobody else could.
When asked what he saw that made him think that the Giants are better without Slayton than with him, Harbaugh's response was telling. "I watch practice every day," he said. "This is a team that we're building going forward, so looking back on past stats is not the metric that we're using. We're looking at what we're going to be going forward and the type of team we're going to be. Darius has been great, he's a great guy."
John Harbaugh's between-the-lines Darius Slayton message proves Giants did what they had to
Of course, a coach with Harbaugh's experience isn't going to say that a player just wasn't good enough to stay on the roster. But Giants fans don't need words to know the truth.
Slayton was easy to miss in the preseason. Despite playing significant snaps in all three preseason games, he went two full games without a target. He was still on the field deep into the second quarter in the preseason finale against the New York Jets, while most of the other roster locks were already sitting out.
He entered training camp with a shot at the WR2 role, but the players below him passed him up one by one. By the end of the preseason, it was clear that he wouldn't contribute this year. Even in a relatively thin Giants receiver group, there wasn't a spot for the veteran.
Harbaugh doesn't think that Slayton's time in the NFL is over, though. He said, "He's gonna be fine. He's gonna land somewhere. He's gonna play football somewhere. And we're gonna move forward. It's how football goes."
Slayton is expected to have some interest from other NFL teams. The Kansas City Chiefs, the Las Vegas Raiders, and the Miami Dolphins could all use some help at receiver. Wherever the veteran wideout lands, Giants fans can rest easy knowing that their team moved on.
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