New York Daily News

Game of tag best with JPP

- PAT LEONARD

JASON Pierre-Paul doesn’t want to sign another one-year contract, and he shouldn’t. Pierre-Paul, 28, played well enough with seven fingers in his first full season since that July 4, 2015, fireworks accident to demonstrat­e value.

The Giants want Pierre-Paul back for more than one extra year, and they should. They released Victor Cruz and Rashad Jennings on Monday to save $10 million against the salary cap in part to free room for negotiatio­ns with JPP.

Still, that doesn’t mean the Giants shouldn’t put the franchise tag on Pierre-Paul for the second time in his career on Wednesday, when the NFL’s window for tagging franchise and transition players opens.

Pierre-Paul is looking to cash in but the Giants will want to keep it reasonable. Tagging JPP between Wednesday and the March 1 deadline makes sense because it will give the Giants leverage against other suitors if Pierre-Paul hits free agency on March 9, while simultaneo­usly allowing GM Jerry Reese and Pierre-Paul’s agents to negotiate a long-term deal that isn’t likely to happen overnight.

The Giants would risk upsetting JPP with a franchise tag designatio­n and also risk having to pay him a higher annual salary than they’d prefer. But they arguably would risk more by letting him hit the market next month without any threat of return compensati­on from another team that signs him. He could just walk for nothing.

And this all would be about the Giants creating leverage to get Pierre-Paul back at a reasonable number for several years, not at the price he is likely seeking. The franchise tag, you’ll remember, offers a player a one-year contract for a salary equal to the average of the top five salaries at that position the previous year. That number last year was $15.7 million for defensive ends and could climb over $16 million this year.

That is not an annual number the Giants intend to commit to JPP. Placing the franchise tag on him would risk Pierre-Paul — though unlikely — simply signing for that amount and sticking Big Blue for $16 million in 2017, which the team would not want.

With the franchise tag designatio­n, though, Pierre-Paul and the Giants would have until 4 p.m. on July 15 to negotiate and sign a multi-year contract extension. (If they didn’t agree to one by then, Pierre-Paul only would be allowed to sign that one-year franchise tender with the Giants and could not be extended further until the Giants’ final regular season game of 2017.)

And by placing a non-exclusive franchise tag on Pierre-Paul, the Giants would allow Pierre-Paul to negotiate with other NFL teams but would force any other suitor to pay two first-round picks in compensati­on in addition to the contract it gave JPP, an enormous ask and one no NFL team likely would answer.

That brings us to Pierre-Paul’s negotiatio­ns with the Giants.

The biggest impediment to these talks might be convincing Pierre-Paul to take a contract clearly inferior to the deal that should have been his: Olivier Vernon’s five-year, $85 million deal with $52.5 million guaranteed signed with the Giants in free agency last offseason. Pierre-Paul, under the franchise tag after the 2014 season, was on his way to negotiatin­g a megadeal when he blew up his hand. The Giants pulled the deal off the table. JPP has been climbing his way back on one-year deals ever since.

Even after an encouragin­g 2016 season, though (on a one-year, $10 million contract with $8.5 million guaranteed), Pierre-Paul is never going to get the type of guaranteed money that Vernon received. Vernon was 25 when he signed that contract. JPP is 28. Plus, while Pierre-Paul was a consistent run disrupter and presence, he had 5.5 of his seven sacks in a two-week span. And he still did not get through the season healthy: JPP required sports hernia surgery that sidelined him from Week 14 through the Giants’ playoff loss in Green Bay.

Worst case with the franchise tag, if the Giants and PierrePaul can’t strike a deal, and the draft pick compensati­on is too much for teams to pay: Big Blue then could sign JPP to a contract and trade him for a first and a fourth, for example, a more palatable price for a free-agent suitor to pay.

The Giants don’t want Pierre-Paul playing anywhere else, though, and they don’t want him to play on the franchise tag for them. They want a longerterm deal at the right price, and tagging Pierre-Paul would be good business: protecting their interests, while assuring JPP their end goal is to bring him back to East Rutherford for much longer than one more year.

 ?? AP ?? Neither Jason Pierre-Paul nor Giants need to be in a rush to get deal done, but franchise tag makes sense as first step for both parties.
AP Neither Jason Pierre-Paul nor Giants need to be in a rush to get deal done, but franchise tag makes sense as first step for both parties.
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