Center stage
Giants ship Jones to Vikes, put faith in Halapio
Brett Jones arguably deserved first-team snaps in Giants practice on Sunday. Inleague stead, GM Dave Gettleman traded Jones to the Minnesota Vikings for a 2019 seventh-round pick and doubled down on his struggling starting offensive line, namely center Jon Halapio.
“At this point the story is we traded Jonesy,” said head coach Pat Shurmur, who said he put in a good word with his former team. “But we like what Halapio’s been doing. Just like the way he’s playing.”
Jones, 27, a versatile center/guard, impressed many evaluators around the last season when he started 13 games for the Giants, 12 at center in place of injured starter Weston RichIronically, burg. Jones now could end up starting in Week 1 for the Vikings, who are without starting center Pat Elflein due to injury and also are banged up at guard.
Gettleman, Shurmur and the Giants, though, saw something different when they watched the film and favor Halapio, 27, who started six games at guard for the Giants last season and appeared in 10 total. And sources say that was the root of the trade: the Giants’ strong commitment to Halapio, plus the Vikings’ high opinion of Jones and need.
Jones actually taught Halapio the center position while they were teammates, and now he has been replaced by Halapio at that position and traded away. They started next to each other in Week 17 of last season, when the team gained a season-high 260 rushing yards.
“I give a lot of credit to him when I first started playing center,” said Halapio, visibly impacted in losing a friend from the roster. “He’s helped me through snapping, understanding the game. Hats off to Brett. I always thank him. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be in this position.”
There were signs of the Jones trade before the news broke midafternoon. The Giants actually pulled him off the practice field just as 11on-11 drills were getting underway, but players leave the field for a variety of reasons so it didn’t set off many alarms at first. Turns out the Giants were protecting Jones from harm with a deal near done.
“At that point because we’d made a deal we wanted
to get him out so he doesn’t get banged up,” Shurmur said.
Halapio said he’s seen a player pulled off the field like that once before, when he was a rookie with the Patriots and New England traded Logan Mankins to Tampa Bay in Aug. 2014.
Trading Jones clears $2.9 million in cap space, the 2018 salary of the second-round tender the Giants applied to Jones as a restricted free agent this past offseason. Halapio is scheduled to make just $555,000 after being re-signed as an exclusive rights free agent.
“I’m not worried about that,” Shurmur said of the financial savings. “We feel like we’re gonna make decisions on what’s best for our team.”
More interesting is what this means for the Giants’ offensive line.
Despite gaining just 22 yards on the Giants’ last 23 carries behind the five starting offensive linemen, Shurmur is keeping that group intact rather than experimenting by plugging in top backups such as Jones.
With Jones now out of the picture, guard/center John Greco becomes the team’s backup center. Guard John Jerry and possibly Chad Wheeler form the remaining depth behind starters Nate Solder, Will Hernandez, Halapio, Patrick Omameh and Ereck Flowers.
Wheeler has been playing right tackle on the second-team offensive line but on Sunday flipped to the left side and Nick Becton moved from left to right.
Halapio said of what Shurmur may see in him that he likes: “I would like to think I’m improving every day. I would like to think that I’m ascending as a player at that position.” But he remained humble and said “right now I’m just focused on trying to get everybody on the same page and trying to get this run game going and improve.”
Getting the run game going. Imperative with the seasonopener against Jacksonville now just two weeks away.