Most Underrated Offseason Move the Giants Made 

Gone are the days in which the Giants throw around big money, long-term contracts at free agents, very few of whom ever work out or see the end of those deals, but who, because of their large cap hits, are consistent targets for restructuring, which in turn inflates the dead money the team must eat down the road.

In 2025, the Giants signed 13 free agents who had been with other teams and four veterans who had been cut.

According to Spotrac, they finished the 2025 season with just $1.569 million in cap space (28th), after doling out over $162 million on new faces selected to help turn the won-loss record around.

This year, the Giants took a different approach to contracts, enabling them to do more with less.

New York signed 15 unrestricted free agents and five veterans who had been salary cap cuts by their original teams, spending just over $128.417 million on those players.

With few exceptions–Isaiah Likely, Tremaine Edmunds, and Jordan Stout all come to mind- the free agents signed inked deals that were either one or two years in length, deals aimed at filling a hole until the Giants can find a longer-term solution to put on a rookie deal.

And among the shorter-term deals, the Giants didn’t break the bank; the most expensive of the one- and two-year deals was nose tackle DJ Reader, who signed for two years and $12.5 million.

As for the cap space? The good news is that the Giants currently have $12.424 million left under their cap with two first-round draft picks–Arvell Reese and Francis Mauigoa–still needing to sign their respective rookie deals.

When that happens, it will likely require the Giants to do one additional contract restructuring to ensure they have enough money to get through the summer and the start of the 2026 season.

Best of all? Aponte, in structuring the contracts, didn’t break the emergency glass by using option bonuses or voidable years that, if not used wisely, can create salary cap headaches down the line.  

Smart Money Management

Eagles general manager Howie Roseman is among those well known in league circles for his aggressive manipulation of the salary cap by driving large contracts that include option bonuses and voidable years that align with projections of future league-wide caps.  

While Roseman has had his share of success with his aggressive spending, it was important to remember that the Giants are in a much different place regarding their roster, which has had more false starts in the rebuild process due to the coaching carousel the team has been on ever since Tom Coughlin resigned following the 2015 season, than it probably planned for.

Those continued mulligans have led to constant roster reshaping and, with it, a lack of continuity.

With John Harbaugh's arrival, the hope is that those days are over and the Giants can get back to retaining the talent they’ve had to let go in the past. But that can’t be done without smart fiscal management.

That’s where Aponte has come in. As the chief salary cap manager, she has worked out deals with players that Harbaugh wanted without blowing the cap on any one contract.

Giants assistant general manager Brandon Brown, who spent several years with the Eagles and Roseman, verbally applauded Aponte for the job she’s done with getting the Giants' fiscal resources in check.

“I think the biggest thing she's allowed us to do is leverage our currency,” he said last week at the team’s rookie minicamp. “

When I say leverage currency, it's your players, your picks, and your cash. And really doing that while preserving our ability to accumulate comp picks and doing that is just being really -- forecasting from one to two years, and really part of being able to use some of those mechanisms, like option bonuses and void years; you've got to stay healthy.

“We're on our way to doing that. You have to stay healthy and be able to keep rewarding those guys that are playing at a high level and staying healthy over a long duration.”

The Giants, according to Over the Cap, are projected to gain an extra fourth-round pick in next year’s draft, a good development since they included their 2027 fourth-round pick in the Fields trade.

So how is that possible, given that the Giants signed more players than they did a year ago? Since a contact’s net worth is also a factor in the comp pick formula, all it took was a little creative–and legal–accounting.

Fiscal Forecasting

Rather than hand out lump-sum payments each year of the contract, Aponte included performance incentives based on play-time percentages and other metrics specific to the player’s position, with the majority of those incentives designated as “Not Likely to Be Earned” (NLTBE).

An NLTBE incentive does not count against the team’s current salary cap, which in turn opens up more space for the team to sign more players.

Should the players hit their incentives, that money, which hits next year’s cap, will fold into the 2027 cap figure, which is expected to rise significantly once again.

Further, by limiting the contracts to no more than two years (there were some exceptions, such as linebacker Tremaine Edmunds, tight end Isaiah Likely, and punter Jordan Stout, who got three-year deals), the Giants can exit those two-year deals without having to eat gobs of dead money while also being able to recognize healthy cap savings.

As an added bonus, none of the contracts the Giants handed out to players count for eight figures against the cap this year, the highest cap hit belonging to cornerback Greg Newsome II ($8 million).

A Brighter, Healthier Cap Future

Aponte won’t suit up on gameday, but there is little doubt that her arrival, in conjunction with that of Harbaugh’s, finally has the Giants moving in the right direction after years of spinning their wheels only to have nothing to show for it.