The Giants’ new $40 million tight end has one number he has to answer for

Giants tight end Isaiah Likely is the veteran newcomer to watch at training camp this month. Likely signed a three-year, $40 million contract in March with a $12.5 million signing bonus and $26 million guaranteed, a deal that reaches $47.5 million with incentives, per Spotrac. That is a starting tight end’s contract, and Likely has never been a starting tight end.

Four seasons behind Mark Andrews, and no 500-yard year

Likely leaves Baltimore with 135 career receptions for 1,568 yards across four seasons, a stretch spent almost entirely as the second option behind Mark Andrews. His best year came in 2024: 42 catches, 477 yards, six touchdowns. His 2025 season never got off the ground, since foot surgery in late July cost him the first three games and he finished with 27 catches for 307 yards and one touchdown, a snap total so light that PFF did not grade him among qualified tight ends.

Joe Schoen paid $13.33 million per year in average annual value for a player whose best receiving season stopped at 477 yards, betting that the ceiling in that table was never Likely’s but Andrews’, and that a full-time role in New York unlocks the starter who has only ever flashed in short bursts. It is a projection, not a purchase of proven production.

Theo Johnson’s drops are the other half of the problem

Johnson caught 45 of 72 targets for 528 yards and a team-leading five touchdowns in 2025, out-producing the man the Giants just paid. He was also charged with seven drops, and PFF has him leading all NFL tight ends in drops across his first two seasons combined. His 58.0 overall PFF grade ranked 33rd among 37 qualified tight ends, with a 62.0 receiving grade that ranked 30th, per PFF.

Johnson posted a 51.0 run-block grade and a 41.0 pass-block grade on his blocking snaps, ranking 32nd of 42 tight ends with at least 260 of them. Chris Manhertz sits third on the depth chart specifically because neither of the top two tight ends has earned the in-line trust of a run-first staff, with Thomas Fidone II developing behind them, per OurLads. The blocking file offers Johnson no refuge from the receiving one.

Matt Nagy’s offense needs one of them to be right in September

Malik Nabers opens camp on the PUP list following a second knee procedure, which pushes real target volume toward a receiver room built on veterans and toward the tight ends by default. Matt Nagy runs the offense with Greg Roman as senior offensive assistant and Tim Kelly coaching tight ends, a staff whose Baltimore lineage leans heavily on 12-personnel and on tight ends winning in the seam and the red zone. Johnson has already shown he can do the red-zone part, with five touchdowns on a bad offense. Likely was drafted to do the seam part and was paid to do both.

Likely is 26, has never cleared 500 receiving yards in a season, and is a year removed from foot surgery. Johnson brings the size, the touchdowns, and hands that betray him at the worst possible moments. Schoen spent $26 million guaranteed to fix a position group that produced fewer than 850 receiving yards in 2025, and none of that money guarantees the fix works. It has to show up on a practice field in West Virginia first.

Pay a career TE2 like a TE1, and you had better be right about which one he is.

By Anthony Rivardo

Anthony Rivardo is the COO of Empire Sports Media and the host of Fireside Giants, a New York Giants ... More about Anthony Rivardo