Just as David Bakhtiari and Trent Williams benefited from Laremy Tunsil‘s first Texans extension, a younger crop of left tackles will move into that position after Houston locked down its left-sider once again.
Tunsil signed a three-year, $75MM deal to once again raise the ceiling at his position. Not only is Tunsil the NFL’s highest-paid left tackle, only two other offensive linemen — Williams and Bakhtiari — come within $4MM in AAV of Houston’s top blocker. Teams could look to categorize Tunsil’s latest deal as an outlier, but as younger tackles move into position for extensions, this contract — for a 29-year-old lineman — will undoubtedly become a discussion point.
This will now affect the Giants. Tunsil’s AAV will be the floor for Andrew Thomas, according to The Athletic’s Dan Duggan (subscription required). The Giants will have the 2020 first-round pick under contract for two more seasons — once they pick up his fifth-year option by May — but Duggan adds the team is interested in extending its ascending left tackle early.
A 2023 extension for Thomas, 24, would be a move slightly out of step with teams’ strategies with young tackles. But not all of them. Between 2011-19, 13 first-round tackles signed extensions. Of those, four did so with two years of rookie-contract control remaining (Kolton Miller, Eric Fisher, Lane Johnson, Tyron Smith). And Smith’s Cowboys extension — which somehow remains an active contract, despite it being signed in 2014 — was an outlier due to its eight-year length. The rest of the extended tackles signed deals in their contract years.
The Giants have Dexter Lawrence as a 2023 extension priority, with the cornerstone defensive tackle going into his fifth-year option season, and are carrying a $10.1MM Saquon Barkley franchise tag. The Giants also have Leonard Williams attached to a $32.3MM cap number in the third and final year of his contract. These matters being unresolved would point to the team tabling Thomas’ extension to 2024. (The team holds just $2.2MM in cap space.) Precedent, for the most part, would make this the more logical conclusion. The left tackle market also might not move too much between now and the ’24 offseason, with no high-end blindsiders entering contract years.
That said, the salary cap will make another jump in 2024. And another strong Thomas season would bolster his value. As such, the Giants — should they extend Barkley to reduce his 2023 cap number — could offer Thomas a non-market-topping extension this offseason and put him to a decision of taking it or betting on himself moving into a stronger negotiating position in 2024.
This represents a good problem for the Giants, who struggled to staff this position for years. The Ereck Flowers No. 9 overall pick did not pan out, and the team’s Nate Solder free agency overpay did not solve the issue, either. Thomas struggled as a rookie but graded as a top-20 tackle, per Pro Football Focus, in 2021. Last season, the Georgia product earned second-team All-Pro acclaim and moved onto the radar for a top-tier extension.
The Giants’ O-line makeup should allow the team to fit a Thomas extension onto the payroll. The team does not have another upper-crust O-line contract on the books, and right tackle Evan Neal‘s first-round deal runs through 2025 (2026 if his option ends up being exercised). The team has this position checked off, at long last, and Thomas will be a key factor in Daniel Jones‘ success on his new contract. Barring injury, Thomas will be in excellent position to cash in — perhaps on a market-resetting deal.
Good for Thomas, coming out of high school his coach said he was already college ready, and Thomas didn’t prove him wrong. He will always be a DGD, and hope he resets the market for LTs. If there’s any young man that deserves it, it’s a role model like him.
He could have easily folded after getting off to a bad year in a market like New York, but instead he trusted his training, dug deep, and continued honing his craft. The Giants got themselves a great one, and someone else will be getting a great one when they select Broderick Jones the next AP Tackle from UGA….Book it.