The New York Giants are barreling toward a monumental offseason overhaul that will likely see general manager Joe Schoen shown the door, and his departure will almost certainly coincide with the unceremonious exit of his greatest draft blunder: Evan Neal.
The former seventh overall pick has become a ghost in the locker room, a healthy scratch for the vast majority of the 2025 season, who offers absolutely zero value to a team desperate for offensive line stability. While the organization tried to salvage his career by moving him to guard this past offseason, the experiment ended before it even began, and Neal is now just days away from being purged from the roster entirely.
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A Legacy of Incompetence
To understand why Neal goes down as one of the worst draft picks in franchise history, you have to look at the sheer lack of development over three painful seasons.
Neal hasn’t taken a meaningful snap in 2025, meaning his career essentially ended with a whimper in 2024. In that season, he played just 459 snaps, and while apologists pointed to a respectable 80.8 run-blocking grade as a sign of progress, the rest of his profile was a disaster. He posted a miserable 49.6 pass-blocking grade, allowing 17 pressures, five quarterback hits, and two sacks in limited action. You simply cannot hide a lineman who fails to protect the passer half the time, no matter how well he mauls in the run game.
Regression Was the Only Consistency
The tragedy of Evan Neal isn’t just that he was bad; it’s that he got worse the longer he stayed in New York. In his rookie year of 2022, he played 738 snaps and allowed a staggering 39 pressures and seven sacks, earning a porous 47.5 pass-blocking grade.
Instead of taking a step forward in 2023, he regressed, seeing his offensive grade plummet to a career-low 39.8 while his pass-blocking grade bottomed out at 38.5. He allowed 29 pressures in just 460 snaps that year, proving that he was a liability regardless of experience or coaching.
A Fresh Slate for Everyone
The Giants clearly do not value Neal’s skill set, evidenced by their refusal to play him even when injuries thinned out the line this year. With a hamstring injury now officially ending any hope of a late-season redemption arc, the writing is on the wall.
Neal is a sunk cost, a $24 million and 7th overall mistake that set the franchise back years at right tackle before landing Jermaine Eluemunor. Cutting ties with him isn’t just a roster move; it is a necessary exorcism for a team trying to wash away the stench of the Schoen era. Neal will get a fresh slate elsewhere, but in New York, he will be remembered solely as the anchor that dragged this rebuild down.
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