Yo Adrien! Giants agree to terms with 4th round pick

Adrien Robinson, the fourth-round pick of the Giants who was referred to as “the JPP of tight ends” by Jerry Reese, has agreed to the terms of his rookie contract. The four-year deal is worth $2.48 million and includes a signing bonus of about $385,000. Robinson was underused in Cincinnati’s spread offense but the Giants believe he can become a dynamic player for them under the tutelage of tight ends coach Mike Pope.

When you consider that Robinson caught only 29 passes in his four years at college, it works out to $85,517 per catch in his rookie contract. If you extrapolate those numbers for Rueben Randle, who had 97 career receptions in college, his rookie deal would be worth almost $8.3 million. I doubt the Giants will stick to the formula.

Robinson is the first of the Giants’ picks to come to terms, a process that normally takes most of the summer. Very often players are unsigned until just before the start of training camp. But this year NFL teams are allowed to carry 90 players and it’s a hard 90. That means that draft picks count against the number (in the past they did not). So teams have no reason not to sign players as quickly as possible. In past years they would dawdle so that they could have extra bodies around for offseason training and workouts.

Robinson and the other draft picks plus 10 undrafted free agents and a few dozen tryouts will participate in the Giants’ rookie minicamp this weekend.