The New York Giants cut veteran wide receiver Darius Slayton, their longest-tenured player, this past week in a move that many had expected. The timing, however, has left some people perplexed.
The move leaves the Giants with just four wide receivers on their active roster, none of whom played in the team's final two months of last season.
Malik Nabers is coming off a serious knee injury that required two surgeries. His rehabilitation has been long and arduous. He has been moving well in practices, but has yet to test his knee in a game situation.
Darnell Mooney was signed as a free agent this offseason, as was former Giants stud Odell Beckham Jr. Malachi Fields was selected by the Giants in this year's draft in the third round out of Notre Dame.
Nabers has played only two dozen snaps with quarterback Jaxson Dart. The other three, plus Braxton Berrios, who is expected to play in this week's opener against Dallas, have never played a regular-season snap with Dart.
Slayton, a player the Giants had been rumored to have been trying to move in a trade, was the only wideout with any connection to or relationship with Dart. The Giants, however, were adamant that he didn't fit into their future plans and released him this past week.
"We always make all of our personnel decisions about what's best for the team immediately and in the long-term future,' Harbaugh told reporters on Wednesday. "What gives us the best chance to be the best team we can be and that's the choice that we made."
Harbaugh was asked why the Giants waited until a week before the season opener to cut Slayton.
"No strategy to it," he replied. "There's a lot of – there's a lot of factors. I mean, maybe you can get a trade. Maybe you try to wait as long as you can to see if you work out a contract change, right? There's a lot of reasons to it, which I really don't feel obligated to explain. I appreciate the questions. You kind of ask them kind of in a sharp way, like you're mad or something about it. I don't really get the emotion coming from you two guys, but we did it because it's the best thing for our team, and that's what we're doing going forward."
Slayton's salary was a huge factor in his release. They were over the salary cap with the NFL accounting deadline approaching. Cutting Slayton saved approximately $3.16 million against the cap and put the Giants back into compliance.
That's the good news. The bad news is they had to absorb $12.75 million in dead cap charges and have no wide receiver other than Nabers who has a history with Dart.
Harbaugh tidied up his reasoning by pointing to the "several factors" behind Slayton's release.
"He worked hard. He worked extremely hard to get himself back from the injury," Harbaugh said. "I don't think he even – he feels like he's fully back yet, probably, but he will be at some point in time. And where we're standing right now, it's just not the best thing for us, but maybe not the best thing for him either. I don't know. We'll see how it goes. He's going to be fine. He's going to land somewhere, he's going to play football somewhere and we're going to move forward. So, that's how football goes. Nothing lasts forever."
And that, as they say, is that.
This article originally appeared on Giants Wire: Giants' John Harbaugh explains release of Darius Slayton. Kind of
