You can bet that before John Harbaugh seriously considered becoming head coach of the New York Giants, he had his agent find out how their financial health stacks up against the rest of the NFL. There is a narrative out there in social media that the Giants are in the red. If so, why would Harbaugh touch this job with a ten-foot pole considering that all that money bought a 4-13 result? Either Harbaugh sees himself as a savior who can succeed where Brian Daboll and his assistant coaches did not with the Giants’
existing roster, or he realizes that their situation is more a result of their financial philosophy up to this point under Joe Schoen and is not as dire as reports make it sound.
There’s probably some of both going on. Many people look at this Giants team and see a group that had fourth quarter leads over Dallas, Denver, Green Bay, Detroit, and Chicago and couldn’t hold any of them. Close those games out and they’re 9-8 with the current roster. Still, no one sees this as a Super Bowl-capable group of players. Even if Harbaugh can work miracles, there are still a bunch of holes to fill if he has any hope of competing for a playoff spot next season. One of the big questions going forward is whether and how Harbaugh will change the Giants’ approach to spending money on players.
How good or bad are the Giants’ finances, really? Let’s take a look at what Over The Cap (OTC) has to say:
The Giants are one of 13 teams whose effective cap space (i.e., cap space after signing their 2026 draft class) is negative. You can see though that they are “in the red” by a measly $8.3M. Pity those teams at the bottom like the Chiefs who have to fill a $70.1M hole.
One positive is that after Daniel Jones’ $22.2M dead money hit to the Giants’ 2025 finances, they enter the 2026 season with only $216,804 in dead money, second least of any team. By comparison, the Jets lead the NFL with $75.6M of dead money ($49M of it a parting gift from the Aaron Rodgers contract).
Of course things could be better. The Tennessee Titans, whom Harbaugh was scheduled to interview with after his Giants visit, have $81.2M in effective cap space, for example. Yet Harbaugh cancelled his meeting with the Titans and took the Giants job.
Here’s why things are aren’t as bad as they look. OTC calculates a “restructure potential” for each team. Here’s what it looks like for every team:
The farther to the right you are on this chart relative to the vertical green line (zero effective cap space), the better. The left edge for each team is their current effective cap space. The squares and diamonds represent where each team could potentially wind up with “simple” or “maximum” contract restructures.
A simple restructure is the oldest trick in the NFL finances book: The GM converts the maximum amount of contract dollars into signing bonuses whose cap hit can be prorated over the life of the existing contract. The player gets more of his money up front, and thus it is usually possible for the team to do this without requiring the player’s consent. It does have an effect on ownership, though, because it implies greater cash spending in the present year. Perhaps with the $1B infusion of money from the 10% equity sale to Julia Koch, the Giants will do more of this. In 2025 the Giants were 15th in the NFL in cash spending, per Spotrac.
A maximum restructure involves either extending the contract to add more years over which the signing bonus can be prorated, or adding “void years” that spread the cap hit into years after the player’s contract is up and he is no longer on the team. This usually cannot be done without the consent of the player and his agent.
Before we discuss the Giants specifically, note a couple of other teams of interest:
- The Baltimore Ravens are just above the Giants on this chart, i.e., their overall cap health is pretty similar to that of the Giants. Harbaugh is moving from one team to another that is in pretty similar financial shape. At the moment they’re a little bit under the cap in effective space, but their potential to restructure is a little less than the Giants’.
- The Philadelphia Eagles are just above the Ravens. Their current effective cap space is slightly positive, like the Ravens’, but they have very little restructure potential of either kind. In other words, Eagles’ GM Howie Roseman is already using just about every financial trick in the book. No other team comes close.
The Giants, currently $8.3M in the red in effective cap space, can perform as much as $60.1M in simple restructures, getting them to $51.8M in space available to spend on free agents. They can do this unilaterally. If they want to go the route of contract extensions, void years, and/or option bonuses, the maximum they can add is $125.5M, winding up with $117.2M in cap space to use on free agents. (Note also that effective cap space assumes the team’s current set of draft picks – comp picks and draft trades can change that.)
Of course the easiest way to create cap space is to cut players. How would Joe Schoen and John Harbaugh create cap space to improve the team? Here are some likely or at least possible roster casualties that would make the biggest difference in the Giants’ cap health (assuming pre-June 1 cuts):
- Graham Gano: $4.5M cap savings, $1.25M dead money
- Devin Singletary: $5.25M cap savings, $1.25M dead money
- James Hudson: $5.38M cap savings, $2.3M dead money
To me these are obvious moves, totaling $15.1M in savings. Gano has been replaced by Ben Sauls, Singletary by Cam Skattebo and Tyrone Tracy Jr., and Hudson by Marcus Mbow.
- Bobby Okereke: $9.0M cap savings, $5,5M dead money
- Jon Runyan Jr.: $9.25M cap savings, $2.5M dead money
- John Michael Schmitz: $3.86M cap savings, $0.4M dead money
- Roy Robertson-Harris: $3.35M cap savings, $2.4M dead money
These are possible but less obvious. Okereke has not been the same since his breakout 2022 season. Maybe whoever Harbaugh hires as defensive coordinator can recapture that Okereke, but maybe it’s best to start fresh with a draftee or a free agent. $9M in cap savings, despite a $5.5M dead money hit next year, is tempting. Runyan has been perfectly acceptable at left guard, but the Giants should be looking to upgrade their interior offensive line to more than just acceptable, and $9.25M in cap savings can’t be sneezed at. JMS has improved as a run blocker and isn’t quite the liability in pass blocking that he was as a rookie, but neither has he become a real asset. RRH has been an acceptable rotational player but nothing more.
Some of these should and certainly will be done, but to do more, restructures are going to have to be the way to go. I’ve mentioned before that the Giants were one of only two NFL teams with no contract costs in void year money back in February, per Nick Korte of OTC. The Ravens on the other hand had $50.8M in void year costs, 11th most in the NFL:
Thus I’d expect Harbaugh to lobby strongly with Schoen (and ownership since he will report directly to them) to start using void years more regularly to fill holes on the roster. Jaxson Dart needs a WR2. The defense doesn’t just need a good coordinator, it needs a good run-defending IDL, at least one off-ball linebacker if not two, and at the least depth, if not starters, in the secondary. We might expect a couple of those needs to be filled with the Giants’ first and second round draft picks, but they have no third round pick, and any player chosen on Day 3 should not be counted on to start as a rookie. Again, the use of void years to make signing more or better free agents possible implies additional cash spending in the current year, so depending on how many bottles of Silver Oak Cabernet were consumed at Elia Mediterranean last weekend, Harbaugh may or may not have gotten a commitment from ownership to spend more.
By February we should begin to get a sense of how, if at all, Harbaugh has begun to change how the Giants do business off the field, as the Giants begin to position themselves financially for the March free agent period. If we begin to see Schoen-acquired Giants starters released and contracts of some remaining players restructured with void years or option bonuses, we’ll know where the power really resides and to what extent.
