Why are multiple Giants veterans deciding to retire?
Giants center Joe Looney runs a lap around the field during training camp at the Quest Diagnostics Training Center in East Rutherford, N.J., on Monday. Credit: Brad Penner
At the conclusion of Friday’s practice, a fully padded affair that took place on the first hot and humid day of training camp, Nick Gates was asked if he was going to retire.
"No," he said, laughing. "Not yet."
At 25 years old and the starting center for the Giants, why would he? But it was a fair question, given how many others on the team — mostly veterans brought in to provide depth and experience — have taken that route since camp began a little more than a week ago.
Friday brought news that offensive lineman Zach Fulton had decided to walk away from the sport. It came two days after fellow offensive lineman Joe Looney made a similar call and four days after linebacker Todd Davis did the same. The latter two had signed recently.
It’s not unheard of for players to sign one-day contracts to retire with a certain team, but generally they have played for that franchise for a significant amount of time and want to be identified with that team.
Throw in tight end Kelvin Benjamin, who decided to walk away before the first practice even started, and you have four veteran players who might have played significant roles on the team this season deciding they would rather end their careers than stick around.
So what gives? Why are so many jumping ship?
It’d be easy to point to coach Joe Judge and decry his rigorous rules and grueling punishments as the impetus for the exodus. In the three most recent farewells, though, that does not appear to be the case. Other circumstances have contributed to the players’ decisions.
All are grown men with families and obligations. All have played a number of years in the NFL and carry the toll that has taken on their bodies. Then there’s the pandemic, still very much a part of everyone’s lives.
"I would say that a lot of these older vets, they’re at a different point in their life with different things," Judge said. "Zach’s a guy that started a business in the offseason, he just had his son. His family is down in Texas. This is an opportunity for him to get back."
It’s all part of the reason many in the NFL are complaining about a shortage of good players available. Judge said there are far more players this year who, with five or six years of experience in the league, have stopped training and moved on to the next chapters in their lives. Whether it was COVID that made it too hard to put the work in or an abundance of other opportunities, there are fewer capable bodies on the street for teams to call upon and fill their rosters. Add the extra year of NCAA eligibility that was granted student-athletes who may have missed time because of COVID, and the talent pool for depth-chart names and spare parts has shrunk from both ends.
The losses of Looney and Fulton impact the way the offensive line room was intended to function. Neither was penciled in as a starter, but both were expected to provide the very young starting group with behind-the-scenes wisdom and guidance and, in a pinch, playing time.
"We’re a young group, but I think the young guys have got to step up and be leaders," Gates said. "Just take care of each other and keep coming to work every day and working. Young guys have just got to step up, that’s all it is."
The older guys, meanwhile, keep stepping out.
Notes & quotes: After more than two weeks of having Saquon Barkley work on the side while the rest of the team practices, the Giants are no closer to a timetable for the running back’s return. "We’re going to have conversations on a daily basis about his rehab and conversations on a weekly basis at times on where we think he is coming up," Judge said. "In terms of the timetable . . . I let the medical team handle it, and when they tell me a guy is good to go and put him on the field, I know he’s good to go." Barkley has taken to running the post-practice conditioning with the rest of the team, but most of his work continues in isolation. Judge said he sometimes finds himself at practice peeking over at the adjacent field where Barkley works to get a look at his activities – on Friday, for instance, he was cutting between garbage cans and at one point jumped over one of them – and at other times he will be shown video footage of those workouts if there is something that should be brought to his attention. Barkley is only a hundred or so yards away from the team during those drills, but he might as well be in another city for how distant he is to the action. "He’s making daily progress," Judge said. "I know it sounds like a broken record, but that’s important for us to see coming off an injury like this. You want to make sure that it’s not push it forward and take a step back."
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.
