The Giants released three veteran players on Monday. One was not surprising (Carlos Emmons), another a bit of a surprise (LaVar Arrington), and the last very unexpected (Luke Petitgout). Let’s startwith Emmons. He never lived up to his reputation mainly because he was injury plagued his entire stay with the Giants. After three consecutive seasons of injuries it was time to move in another direction. Arrington was surprising mainly because he was just in the second year of his contract and you’d figure the salary cap implications of releasing him could be devastating. But it appears it will only cost the Giants $2.9 million and considering Arrington is rehabbing an Achilles injury from last season (throw in a bad knee which limited his practice time last training camp) it’s clear the Giants wanted to start fresh at the OLB position.
Petitgout was the biggest eyebrow raiser. The Giants are parting ways with a pretty good left tackle (albeit sometimes injured-bad back) and the guy responsible for watching Eli’s back. So why did they do this? For the last two years they have allowed a low number of sacks while piling up big time rushing yards. Obviously it just wasn’t all Petitigout but he was a part of it. The Giants said these cuts were due to players not being able to stay healthy (ummm, are Strahan and Shockey next..obviously not). That makes sense with Arrington and Emmons, but Pettigout played injury free in 2004 and 2005, and the injury he suffered half way into 2006 can hardly be considered his fault or a conditioning thing. Also I don’t believe there were any long term effects projected due to that injury.
The Giants will net about $2 million in salary cap from all three moves. So it is not even a salary cap issue. This is Jerry Reese beginning to put his stamp on the team as GM. It also becomes apparent to me that David Diehl will move to left tackle and Rich Seubert will move to guard. I’m okay with that……..Diehl is athletic enough to play out there and Seubert is starter material. It just seems to me giving up a premium position player in Petitgout hurts the depth on a critical unit. Resigning center Shaun O’Hara becomes even more important now or the Giants will be searching for a starting center in addition to depth 2007.Â
The purge continues with Chad Morton getting cut. You feel bad for an player still recovering from injury getting the boot, but our return game was simply AWFUL last year.