Mara on spending spree: ‘Time for us to start winning’
John Mara insists that signing three players to lucrative contracts wasn’t necessarily the plan coming into the offseason, but it’s easy to see why the Giants’ president and co-owner ultimately signed off on the spending spree.
The Giants have not even been a .500 team in any of the four seasons since making the playoffs in 2016.
“I’m tired of the losing and having the post-season press conference trying to explain what went wrong and why I think we’re making progress,” Mara said Wednesday. “It’s time for us to start winning some more, and that’s one of the reasons we spent the money that we did. I do think we’re making progress here. We’ve added more players; it’s definitely a better locker room than we’ve had in a while.”
Wide receiver Kenny Golladay, defensive lineman Leonard Williams and cornerback Adoree’ Jackson all signed with New York for a total of $172 million over the next four seasons. Larger cap hits will come after 2021, which Mara figures will be favorable in the long run once the cap bounces back from lost revenue from COVID-19.
“We’re desperately hoping that we’re gonna have more revenue to work with and that the cap will be a little bit higher, because yes, we did obviously spend a lot of money and we pushed some money into future years, to be sure, to create some additional space,” Mara said. “Certainly we’re hoping that revenues will be up, and we believe that they will be, given the rollout of the vaccines and what not.”
Outsiders are already drawing comparisons to when the Giants splurged on defensive end Olivier Vernon, cornerback Janoris Jenkins and defensive tackle Damon Harrison in 2016. It set them up for short-term success as the team went 11-5 and won the NFC East that year, but then the Giants became handicapped with overpriced veterans as the results plummeted.
Mara believes this time will be different. The recruiting of Golladay and Jackson was unique in that current Giants players were involved and the front office hosted overnight visits with both players.
“We’re committed to doing whatever we have to do to put a winning team on the field,” Mara said. “There were opportunities that presented themselves to add quality young players that were highly regarded. We think they can make an impact, and also were positions of need, so we took advantage of them. I think you can’t do that every year, but when the opportunity presents itself, I think you have to seize it and I think that’s what we did this year. We think it’ll pay off, but time will tell.”
The Giants have traditionally been conservative with adding players who have extensive injury histories, but they were comfortable with Golladay and Jackson despite the fact that they missed a combined 24 games last season with various injuries.
“It certainly was an important factor, and that’s why it was so critical that
we take complete physicals and that we have our medical people take a good look at them and make sure that they are over whatever injuries they had and are able to be helpful players for us in 2021,” Mara said. “I was satisfied at the end of the day that we had done that.”
The Giants need Golladay, especially, to be a highimpact player for an offense that ranked 31st in scoring last season and enters a critical third year for quarterback Daniel Jones to prove he can lead the franchise back to being a winner.
“We think of the world of Daniel in this building,” Mara said. “We want to see him take the next step. I don’t have any specific benchmarks other than, ‘Let’s win some more games.’ I think he will have a better team around him this year than he has had in previous years, so we certainly expect him to take the next step.”
Golladay, 27, had back-toback 1,000-yard receiving seasons in Detroit from 201819. He led the NFL with 11 receiving touchdowns in 2019.
“Golladay, obviously, has put up some great numbers in this league and John Ross is somebody who has some unique speed, and we think we might hit on him as well,” Mara said. “I think surrounding Daniel with more weapons was certainly a priority coming into this offseason.
But that would be true no matter who the quarterback is. You always want to put as many weapons on the field as possible. It’s become more and more of a passing league.”
Mara, however, does not sound prepared to hand out a big contract extension to running back Saquon Barkley, who is coming off a torn ACL as he enters the final year of his rookie contract. But the Giants will almost exercise the fifth-year option on his contract (May 3 deadline) because it will only cost $7.2 million — a pay cut from his $10.1 million cap hit in 2021.
Assuming Barkley reestablishes himself as healthy and one of the NFL’s best backs again next season, the Giants could be staring at a holdout scenario next summer if they don’t open their checkbooks for their 2018 first-round pick.
“I certainly think we’re not in any hurry to do that,” Mara said. “We fully expect him to be as good as new. If anybody is going to spend 100 percent of his efforts to rehab it’ll be Saquon, just knowing what type of motivation he has, the desire he has. But we’re not in any hurry to do that at this point in time, particularly after the money we just spent. But listen, I said it at the end of the season and I’ll say it again: We hope he’s going to be a Giant for life, and at the appropriate time we’ll start those discussions.”