Anthony Rivardo
The Giants surprisingly re-signed former 2022 first-round pick Evan Neal this offseason on a $1.215 million deal that would’ve given him an opportunity to compete for the team’s right guard spot. But then they drafted Francis Mauigoa with the 10th overall pick, and now Neal is competing for any spot on the roster.
Neal, the No. 7 overall pick in 2022, is no longer the centerpiece of anything in East Rutherford, as the franchise hoped he would be when they selected him with the premium pick. Now he is a reclamation project on a minimum-level deal, and new head coach John Harbaugh has latched onto the idea that the former Alabama tackle still has potential buried inside him — at a different position.
A top-10 pick the Giants already moved on from once
New York declined Neal’s fifth-year option worth roughly $16.7 million after the 2025 draft, a formal admission that the seventh pick of an entire draft class had not worked out. The numbers behind that decision are not subtle. As a rookie in 2022, Neal allowed 39 pressures and seven sacks on 453 pass-blocking snaps and earned a 44.1 overall PFF grade, one of the worst marks among qualified tackles in the league, according to PFF.
Injuries then turned a bad start into a lost three years. Neal played just seven games in 2023 before a December trip to injured reserve, finishing with a 39.8 overall grade, and he barely saw the field in 2024 after the Giants replaced and benched him. There was hope that the 2025 season could be his reset at guard, but a combination of hamstring and back injuries and his lack of ability to win the job over the veteran Greg Van Roten wiped out those chances, and he never even took a single regular-season snap at the new spot.
| Season | Role | Games started | PFF overall grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Right tackle (rookie) | 13 | 44.1 |
| 2023 | Right tackle | 7 | 39.8 |
| 2025 | Guard | 0 | Did not play |
Why Harbaugh is betting on Neal anyway
Harbaugh has built two decades of credibility on developing trench players, and he made his pitch on Neal explicit at the league meetings in March. “They haven’t broken through yet, but why can’t they?” he said of Neal and Joshua Ezeudu (h/t SI). The bet is that Neal’s size and run-blocking power translate better to the interior, where the edges he routinely lost as a tackle matter less and his lack of recovery quickness gets hidden in tighter quarters.
A 6-foot-7, 360-pound mauler who never solved speed off the corner can still move bodies in a phone booth, and Harbaugh wants an offense that, in his words, is “big, blue and bruising.” Neal’s frame fits that description better than his tape ever has.
Neal faces an uphill battle just to make the roster
The problem for Neal is everyone else in the room. The Giants used the No. 10 overall pick on guard Francis Mauigoa, who will start at right guard as a rookie, and they added veteran Daniel Faalele in free agency for good measure. Jon Runyan Jr. is locked in at left guard next to center John Michael Schmitz, with Andrew Thomas at left tackle and Jermaine Eluemunor at right tackle.
Stack it up, and Neal is not competing for a job on the offensive line anymore; he is just competing for a job on the roster. But the Giants have free-agent additions and holdovers like Ezeudu and Jake Kubas also in the mix. The reps that once came automatically to a seventh overall pick now have to be earned against a depth chart the Giants spent real draft capital to build.
What’s actually at stake for Neal
Neal arrived as a franchise tackle and a top-10 investment, and he returns as a minimum-salary flier whose own coaching staff drafted his likely replacement before camp even opened. The runway has dissolved, and Harbaugh’s “why not” only holds up if Neal answers it on the field this summer. The Giants gave him one more chance to prove the scouting report was right. Now he needs to fight to earn a roster spot or face the music on cut day.
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