It doesn’t look like Kyle Lauletta has a future with the New York Giants.
The team took the former Richmond Spiders quarterback in the fourth round in the 2018 NFL Draft and fans quickly had high hopes for the new player – it would take time for him to develop, but Lauletta had shown promise at Richmond and many saw him as, at the least, a project player the Giants could work on while keeping Eli Manning as the starter, in the same way that Daniel Jones is currently learning from Manning.
But it didn’t even take a full season for Lauletta to end up with a very rough start to his career, making the headlines during the season not for his play on the field but for a dangerous driving arrest when he was a backup. When he finally did make it onto the field for the regular season, after the Giants pulled Eli Manning during a blowout game, Lauletta only managed five passes for no completions and an interception.
Not every quarterback has a good debut, but a passer rating of zero isn’t exactly average either.
Since then, Lauletta has mostly faded into the background with the team taking Daniel Jones at number six overall. When Jones left the game as the Giants made a switch at quarterback during the first preseason matchup, against the New York Jets, it was Alex Tanney and not Lauletta that ended up in the game. No one expected Lauletta to compete for the number one backup spot, but losing out to Tanney also doesn’t spell good things for Lauletta’s career prospects if the Giants want to go into the regular season with three quarterbacks.
However, saying that the team is likely to trade Lauletta rather than release him might be unrealistic.
With a career stat line of zero complete passes and one interception, Lauletta isn’t exactly the first player that most teams want to take on to fill their backup role.
While Lauletta did play well in the preseason opener for the Giants, there’s other players that represent less of a risk to any team thinking of trading for a quarterback, players that are more proven against better competition despite being out of a team. And one good preseason game isn’t enough of a track record for a team to trust a backup spot with Lauletta, a player who the Giants themselves weren’t satisfied with after only one season.
Does Lauletta have a future in the NFL? Maybe. Players have made comebacks from bad starts before.
But asking a team to give something up for Lauletta, a player who will likely end up a free agent at some time in the near future, might be a bit much.
It doesn’t look like Lauletta has a future with the team and as such teams can expect a chance to get him without giving up anything following a release. Instead of seeing a team give up assets for an unproven player with a bad track record, expect them to show some patience here and wait.