Leonard Williams wants to make another playoff run with Giants
Leonard Williams has seen a lot of football in these parts.
Four years as a Jet, four as a Giant.
In 2019, he spent time with both teams as the Jets traded him to the Giants during the season.
This season, he reached the playoffs for the first time, winning in Minnesota before Saturday night’s lopsided loss in Philadelphia.
To listen to Williams is to listen to a true veteran, a guy who plays through injuries. A player who, like many in the Giants’ locker room Sunday, thought the season ended too soon.
Yes, the Giants were defeated handily, 38-7, by the Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field. And in this case, the score accurately reflected the play on the field.
The Giants earned that loss.
Just as they earned their 9-7-1 record in the regular season, a significant step up from previous years.
Just as they earned their first playoff win since the 2011 season.
It was not to be against an Eagles team that is stout up front on both sides of the ball and has a quarterback, Jalen Hurts, who’s always believed in himself when others did not.
For Williams, this offseason may bring interesting times.
He is coming off a season in which he finally missed playing time with an MCL sprain early in the season and dealt with a neck issue later in the year.
Williams signed a three-year, $63 million deal before the 2021 season. He is owed a base salary of $18 million in 2023 with a total cap hit of $32.26 million.
Those numbers illustrate why Williams, 28, could be a potential salary-cap casualty. He said he wants to play alongside Dexter Lawrence as long as he can. It will be interesting to see if the Giants can pay both players. The Giants could cut Williams to save $12.2 million against the cap for $20 million in savings.
Williams said Sunday that he might be willing to take a pay cut to stay. He added that is something he’d want to talk about with his agent.
“I try to let things like that play out,” he said. “I believe the plan is the plan and things are going to work out the way they work out. I did my best this year. I fought through injuries and played my hardest. I’m sure I’ll end up somewhere, if not here. I want to play as long as possible.”
Asked about the feeling after the abrupt ending to the Giants’ season, Williams said: “A lot of guys were sad, obviously, but at the end of the day, we reminded each other to keep our heads high because we had a great season overall. And you just see everybody [in the locker room] saying to each other, I love you. It’s beautiful to see that.”
For Williams, the structure of an offseason now commences.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time, so I got a bit of a routine,” he said. “Definitely rest for the first two or three weeks. I think the coaches and the training staff did a good job telling everyone they need to do that, get a little bit of time for yourself. I’m going to head down to Florida, start training at House of Athlete, get a few spear-fishing trips in and get ready for OTAs.”
And he is hopeful his neck will heal in the meantime.
“I’m just going to rest it a lot for right now,” he said. “But at the same time, figure out a plan, figure out exactly what’s going on with it. Try to find somebody who can help me with recovery, whether it’s recovery or strengthening or whatever it takes to get it better. I don’t want this to be something that’s lingering for the rest of my career.
“I basically started off with a stinger that I ignored at first because I’ve had a stinger before, a long time ago in high school,” he said.
Then the pain continued. Williams believes he has “a little bit of nerve damage.”
“The trainers were telling me the main thing it needs is rest that I wasn’t able to get during the season,” he said.
Now there is time for rest and for healing. Williams said he knows one thing: He’ll be playing football later this year. And he hopes it’s in a Giants uniform, next to his buddy Lawrence.
Kimberly Jones covers the Giants for Newsday, a beat she first worked in the early 2000s before joining the YES Network to cover the Yankees. She worked for the NFL Network for more than a decade and has been heard semi-regularly on WFAN.
