Tom Rock: Giants, Jets look to change their fortune as NFL free agency kicks off
Giants coach John Harbaugh and Jets coach Aaron Glenn. Credit: Getty Images/Justin Casterline; Sean Gardner
Super Bowls are played in February. The last two were won the previous March.
In 2024, that’s when the Eagles set themselves on a course for their title with the signings of Saquon Barkley and Zack Baun. Eleven months later, they were having a parade.
Last year around this time, the Seahawks signed Sam Darnold as their quarterback. He’d never won a playoff game as a starter. Now he and Seattle are the champs.
As the NFL’s free-agency negotiating period opens Monday — the many deals and trades that are agreed to can become official with the start of the league year on Wednesday — all 32 teams are striving to make the move that will bring them similar glory in February 2027.
It could be, as it was the past two seasons, a running back who adds a new dimension to an offense or a quarterback whose potential has yet to be fully recognized. It could be a defensive game-wrecker or a lineman who brings stability to up-front chaos with his consistent blocking.
There probably are a dozen or so organizations that can rightly consider themselves a piece away, and they already have begun jostling with each other to land those missing ingredients. A few others might be able to get lucky and meld some key decisions into a conditional contender.
We’ll be quick to label them as “winners” and “losers” of the offseason before these moving parts even arrive in their new locker rooms, but the real verdict won’t be announced until Valentine’s Day next year.
Where will the Giants and Jets fall on that spectrum?
We’re about to find out.
For two teams that have finished each of the last few seasons with remarkably similar and sad records — the Jets have won 15 games the last three years, the Giants 13 — the franchises seem to be at very different places.
First, the Giants
The Giants already have made the biggest acquisition of their year in landing John Harbaugh as their head coach (along with his accompanying infrastructure). They have a quarterback in Jaxson Dart who they believe is a winner. They think their defensive front can be a dominant force, given the proper scheming and game plans.
There has been a lot of speculation regarding what characteristics the Giants will be looking for in this roster-building. Harbaugh has mostly tossed about generalities regarding what he wants with references to speed and size and catchy phrases about “toughness and physicality” and “loving ball.” Now we’ll finally get to see who Harbaugh thinks is a Harbaugh-type player.
And despite all the things there are to like about the Giants and their expected departure from relying on position-specific quests — although that philosophy is more likely to show up in the draft than in free agency — there are some very glaring holes for the team to fill in the coming days.
Those will be especially prominent if the Giants wind up losing any of their own three pending free agents: wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson, tackle Jermaine Eluemunor and cornerback Cor’Dale Flott.
Free agency, it turns out, often is as much about saying goodbye as saying hello.
The Giants don’t have a tremendous amount of salary-cap space to work with, but they should be able to address some of their needs. They released inside linebacker Bobby Okereke this past week, and even if they are banking on adding Ohio State stud Sonny Styles at that position in April, they will need other bodies there.
Soon-to-be released Bears linebacker Tremaine Edmunds could be near the top of that list, but Bobby Wagner or Demario Davis could be this year’s Russell Wilson or Jameis Winston signings for the Giants.
They restructured the contract of running back Devin Singletary to make it more cap-friendly (and cash-friendly), but that won’t preclude them from exploring more options at running back.
Kenneth Walker III, the most recent Super Bowl MVP, has been linked to the Giants and certainly would fit in well with Harbaugh’s run-heavy approach. It would make for a crowded position room at first, but Singletary barely costs the Giants anything now, Cam Skattebo is coming back from a serious leg injury and Tyrone Tracy Jr., while solid, has yet to show he can be a go-to guy for a full season.
They need cornerbacks. They need receivers. But the biggest potential splash for the Giants would be signing center Tyler Linderbaum, a free agent who spent the first four years of his career playing for Harbaugh in Baltimore (so we know he is a Harbaugh-type guy). With reports suggesting he could fetch upward of $20 million a year, that kind of move might not be digestible at this point.
Still, Harbaugh has made it clear he expects to win right away with the Giants. To accomplish that, he’ll need the horses.
As for the Jets . . .
They find themselves in a weird purgatory in which they can’t even be certain they have the right head coach. Aaron Glenn has been asking us since the day he was hired to trust his plan, but with each passing month, it feels more and more as if even Glenn does not.
The plan continually changes, and that included sharp veers in what he wanted from his coaching staff in the past few weeks. The Jets went from interviewing experienced defensive play-callers to hiring a neophyte coordinator and having Glenn run the unit himself. They went from believing in new-school Tanner Engstrand to design the offense to hiring the nearly retired Frank Reich to save it.
It’s hard not to let go of the rope when Glenn keeps greasing it.
Quarterback? That plan has changed several times, too. A year ago, they signed Justin Fields, anointed him the starter and thought they might have a long-term solution at the position. Now they are back in the market and have to find someone who threads a very small target.
They need a quarterback who can win enough games so people can keep their jobs, but not enough that it precludes them from drafting a potential franchise quarterback in what figures to be a position-rich 2027 draft.
Because there is no right answer to their problem, there is no right player; Kyler Murray, Carson Wentz, Geno Smith, Derek Carr, Kirk Cousins and all of the other names that have been bandied about as Jets options are deeply flawed. Someone has to play the position, though. Expect the Jets to sign one this week.
Because they are not on a win-now path, only a respect-now one, the Jets can use their immense draft capital to address other needs such as wide receiver, edge rusher, linebacker, secondary . . . basically every position but running back and punter. They do have the cap space to make some major inroads in those areas, too, and figure to sniff around some of the top names.
Until they get their quarterback settled and have a coach to whom they are fully committed, though, the Jets might continue to be a destination of last resort for many upper-tier players. The contracts may be worth millions, but coming to a team that could be rebuilding again a year from now is an unappealing selling point.
By this time next week, we’ll have a much better idea about how the Giants and Jets — and the 30 other teams — see themselves and how they are seen by others.
And by this time next year, there is a good chance only one of them will have made all the right moves. The rest will just have to try again.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
