In an ideal world – one where the salary cap doesn’t drop because of lost revenues from a year-long pandemic – keeping the 6-4, 315-pounder would be a no-brainer. Not only is the Giants’ line finally close to being at least decent again, but the Giants don’t really have a replacement waiting in the wings.
But Zeitler, who will turn 31 next week, is due a $12 million salary in 2021 and carries a salary cap number of $14.5 million. That’s a problem for the Giants, who right now figure to only have about $10-13 million in salary cap space, assuming the cap is set somewhere around $185 million.
And that’s not nearly enough for them to conduct their offseason business – like possibly re-signing either Leonard Williams or Dalvin Tomlinson (or both) or doing any shopping when the free agent market opens on March 17.
So they can’t afford to keep him, but they can’t afford not to keep him, either.
And there aren’t really many options of what they can do.
The simple solution in cases like these is usually restructuring the player’s contract – turning some salary from one year into a bonus that, for cap purposes, can be spread out over the life of the deal. But Zeitler is in the last year of the five-year, $60 million contract he signed with the Browns back in 2017. So the Giants can’t restructure without extending his contract.
Doing that would be ideal. A short-term extension would solve the Giants’ problem, at least lowering his 2021 cap number by a little. But Zeitler would have to agree to that, and it’s possible he knows he’d be able to get a more lucrative extension if the Giants cut him and he takes his chances on the open market.
Knowing that, he also likely wouldn’t agree to a straight pay cut – the only way the Giants can lower his cap number without extending his deal. Players rarely agree to a pay cut unless they feel they have no other options. And knowing how hard it is to find good offensive linemen in free agency, and how valuable he could be, there’s likely no way Zeitler would agree to that.
That leaves the Giants back where they are: Choosing between keeping Zeitler and his high cap number, or cutting him for cap relief. That’s likely why they have reportedly been shopping him around the league. It’s worth seeing if someone will give them a late draft pick for Zeitler before they simply let him walk away for nothing.
Of course, Zeitler’s cap number makes him virtually untradeable. His new team would be on the hook for $12 million and in the same dilemma as the Giants, with no way to lower that number without giving him an extension. There are surely teams that want him, but not at that cost in a year with a shrunken salary cap, and especially knowing the Giants may have no choice but to cut him in the next two weeks.
Whether they will cut him or not is unclear, especially since it’s not clear how they’d replace him. Will Hernandez, the Giants’ second-round pick in 2018, began last season as the other starting guard, but he lost his job to rookie Shane Lemieux after he tested positive for COVID-19 in late October. After his return, he played only sparingly over the next six games as part of a line rotation. In the Giants’ must-win season finale against the Cowboys, he didn’t play at all.
Giants head coach Joe Judge has never fully explained why, or whether the 6-2, 327-pound Hernandez is still in the teams’ plans. Cutting Zeitler would leave them with no choice, since they won’t be able to afford to replace him in free agency. Lemieux and Hernandez would have to enter camp as the starting guards with Zeitler gone.
That’s a risky move, and potentially a costly one just as the line was starting to look OK. But keeping Zeitler could cost the Giants a player at another position, like Williams or Tomlinson.
Whatever the Giants do could have serious implications for next season.
And Gettleman is running out of time to figure it out.
