It's about asset allocation
This is a simple philosophy that was also followed by Gettleman's mentor, Ernie Accorsi, and even his predecessor, Jerry Reese, to an extent. Positions have a certain worth, and paying for more than that is how teams get into trouble. Offensive and defensive linemen, to Gettleman, are just more valuable than safeties - especially "box" safeties like Collins, whom the Giants believe wasn't always adequate in coverage.
"The Giants always used to say, 'This is what we think your player is worth,' and if you got a dollar over that they'd walk away," one NFL agent said. "Sounds like they're back to that again."
It's actually not just a hard financial line either. It's all in relation to the salary cap. Gettleman estimated he has about $27 million in cap space and wants to hold $8 million or so for use during the season. That leaves him around $19 million to use. Was Collins - or any safety -- worth nearly 60 percent of the Giants' available cap space? And the percentage is even higher when you figure the Giants just tendered restricted free agent receiver Corey Coleman, backup quarterback Alex Tanney, may sign a handful of their own unrestricted free agents, and probably need about $10 million to sign this year's draft class.
It was the same justification for the trade Gettleman completed on Friday, sending his best pass rusher, Olivier Vernon, to the Cleveland Browns for guard Kevin Zeitler. The cap hits for Vernon ($11.5 million) and Zeitler ($10 million) were almost the same. Gettleman felt using that money on a starting offensive linemen was better than using it on an under-achieving linebacker with injury issues.
Clearing out the bad contracts
Gettleman believes in building through the draft and developing his own players, not spending wildly in free agency. He'd rather spend that money to keep the good players he has. But he inherited a roster that had deteriorated from years of bad drafting and was filled with players who were clearly not performing up to their deals. That's at least part of why he traded DE Jason Pierre-Paul (in the middle of a four-year, $62 million deal), DT Damon Harrison (five years, $46 million and traded Vernon (five years, $85 million).
The idea is to take a short-term cap hit in terms of dead money to help clear cap space in the future. And he wants to avoid restructuring contracts too, the way he did last summer with CB Janoris Jenkins. "You don't want to do that," Gettleman said last week. "You do not want to do that. Because that's kicking the can, kicking the can, kicking the can …"
That also explains why they won't restructure Manning's contract, since that would involve extending it beyond 2019, too.