Giants tried, but Kadarius Toney just wasn't a good fit
Brian Daboll chats with Kadarius Toney #89 during Giants camp at Quest Diagnostics Training Center in East Rutherford, NJ on Friday, July 29, 2022. Credit: James Escher
Kadarius Toney’s short on-field stint with the Giants began with his cleats not fitting properly at his rookie minicamp.
Talk about a metaphor.
The wide receiver himself never seemed to fit either. No matter how many shoehorns the Giants pulled out, all they got were blisters and sores.
Toney was traded to Kansas City on Thursday despite the best efforts by the new coaching staff and front office that inherited him to try to rehabilitate the relationship. Ultimately, they just shipped him out.
Brian Daboll said the Giants did what was “best for the team” in the swap. That the receiver-starved Giants, the only team in the league without a player with more than 200 receiving yards this season, would be willing to part ways with one of the more dynamic players at that position on their roster tells you all you need to know about what they really finally thought of him.
Toney gets added to the list of bad first-round selections who were unable to stick around through their rookie contracts with the Giants during the past decade. He joins Ereck Flowers, Eli Apple and DeAndre Baker as wasted picks, all of whom had the same flaw at the time of their arrival in New York: Immaturity.
There are two things that separate him from those other busts, however: the third- and sixth-round picks the Giants got in exchange for him. Unlike the unceremonious dumpings that took place with the others (two were released outright and the Giants managed to get fourth- and seventh-round picks for Apple), general manager Joe Schoen was at least able to salvage some value from Toney. That haul represents perhaps his biggest contribution to a team for which he never reached the end zone. Whatever Schoen does with that newly added capital almost certainly will overshadow anything Toney did on the field.
Hand it to the Giants, though, they did try. In an effort to make Toney feel welcome and appreciated, they even played some of the music he released under his stage name Yung Joka during training camp.
Toney reported to camp healthy, apparently motivated to overcome his disappointing rookie season and carve out a role under a new head coach and general manager. That did not last long. He could not remain on the field because of a hamstring injury in the first two weeks of the preseason and appeared in only two games this season. Alternating hamstring injuries became his raison d’sideline.
In a nod to symmetry, Toney missed just as many games because of injuries and other circumstances as he appeared in for the Giants.
Twelve up and 12 down.
Toney’s time here seemed to be in trouble from the start, doomed even before those ill-chosen cleats. He was drafted as an underscouted afterthought when the previous regime was outflanked in its aim to select the player it truly coveted, receiver DeVonta Smith, who went 10th to the Eagles. Toney wound up being their pick in lieu of Cowboys linebacker Micah Parsons, Chargers offensive tackle Rashawn Slater and Jets guard Alijah Vera-Tucker, all on the board when the Giants panic-traded back from 11th overall with the Bears at 20.
It wasn’t an awful trade; the 2022 picks the Giants generated from that deal were used to draft Evan Neal and Daniel Bellinger, who seem to have bright futures here. It was the selection of Toney rather than those other immediate-impact rookies who were available that has become the worst aspect of it.
From there, Toney’s career with the Giants was defined by similar what ifs. What if he stayed healthy? What if he came to voluntary workouts as a rookie? What if he focused more on football than his music? What if?
The question now becomes: What next?
It will be up to Schoen to decide if he uses those picks to help this year’s roster or next year’s. There still is about a week before the trade deadline, and those newfound assets could be used to add a (presumably healthy) receiver for a potential playoff push without contradicting Schoen’s stated objective of keeping untouched the stockpiled supplies for this coming offseason’s anticipated splurges.
With the Cowboys and Eagles making big moves to solidify their rosters for the second half of the season, Schoen may feel he needs to keep pace in the division and not let this surprising 6-1 start go to waste.
Or the picks could just be added to the pile for March and April, when Schoen will truly start shaping this team into what he envisioned when he took the job in January.
Either way, he’ll certainly use the Toney loot to acquire someone who is a fit with the team and its current vibes better than Toney was. Someone fitter than Toney was, too.
It would be difficult to land someone who is not.
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.
