In his first offseason as the head coach of the New York Giants, John Harbaugh is taking no prisoners.
Beyond reviving the Tom Coughlin era in New York, Harbaugh hasn't been scared to cut ties with some highly touted draft picks, is willing to trade players who don't fit his vision, and now he's sending a message to one of the Giants' biggest free-agent pickups just days before Week 1.
Big Blue signed Paulson Adebo to a three-year, $54 million deal last offseason in the hopes of him cementing himself as their long-term CB1, despite coming off a broken femur. And while he mostly stayed healthy, he never came close to living up to the terms of the deal, often struggling in coverage.
The belief was that the defensive coordinator change from Shane Bowen to Dennard Wilson would help unlock Adebo's potential within this defense, but Harbaugh has other plans. On Tuesday afternoon, the Giants released their initial Week 1 depth chart, and he was not listed as a starter.
Paulson Adebo was not listed as a starter on the Giants' initial Week 1 depth chart
New York had Deonte Banks and Greg Newsome II as the starting CBs on the outside, with Dru Phillips starting in the nickel. Given that we thought Banks’ Giants career was DOA, do you know how bad this looks for Adebo that he’s currently sitting behind this guy? Let me tell you, it clearly isn't good.
There are multiple parts of this that are particularly telling. For starters, it’s another sign that all of the Banks bounce-back hype we saw during training camp might not be a mirage, but it's more telling about Harbaugh's stance on Paulson Adebo that he had him below the fourth-year man on the depth chart.
At $18 million a year, the Stanford product is tied for the 16th-highest-paid cornerback in the NFL and is the highest-paid DB on the team--but John Harbaugh doesn't care. That's what's refreshing about him. He’s made it pretty clear that he’s going to favor the best player for the job regardless of any external circumstances or how much the franchise invested in them.
It would've been easy for the Super Bowl-winning coach to take the path of least resistance and keep Adebo in the starting lineup and hope Wilson’s scheme would bring out the best in him. But instead, his initial depth chart has a player in the last season of his rookie deal and a one-year dart throw ahead of him.
John Harbaugh doesn’t seem to care how much money the Giants are paying Paulson Adebo. Based on this initial depth chart, Deonte Banks has done enough this summer to move ahead of him for now, and that’s a pretty wild development considering where both players stood just a few months ago.
Adebo will still have every opportunity to change that once the games actually count. But for a player making $18 million per year who was supposed to cement himself as the Giants’ long-term CB1, opening Week 1 behind Banks and Greg Newsome II is about as loud a message as Harbaugh could send without saying a word.
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