The Giants Vastly Overpaid Golden Tate, When They Should Be Tanking

Golden Tate got paid on Thursday, signing a four-year, $37.5 million deal with the New York Giants. The contract includes $23.5 million fully guaranteed. This is just a mind-blowingly stupid move by the Giants.

They’re bringing in Tate and paying him like a significant target for Eli Manning. Why? After giving away a dynamic playmaker in Odell Beckham Jr., the Giants are now replacing him with an aging wideout coming off his worst season since 2012.

Let’s be 100 percent real here, the Giants should be in full-on tank mode after trading Beckham. They should be giving short-term, cheap contracts to stop-gap players until they can build up the roster around a new, young quarterback. Instead they seem to be intent on giving too much money to players who won’t make them demonstrably better.

Tate is a fine receiver as a third option. He’s not a No. 1 or anything close to it. He’s more of a shifty slot guy. He split time with the Lions and Eagles in 2018 and finished with 74 receptions for 795 yards and four touchdowns.

The 30-year-old (he’ll turn 31 this summer) finished the 2014, 2016 and 2017 season with more than 1,000 yards, but that came in the wide-open Lions offense with Matthew Stafford throwing to him. He ain’t duplicating that with the reanimated corpse currently masquerading as the lesser Manning brother.

The Giants need to rebuild from the ground up, not sign guys near the end of their effectiveness. Tate will probably catch a decent number of passes in 2019, but will he actually make the team better? Not much.

Saquon Barkley is the key to New York’s future. He’s a stud, one of the best young players in the NFL. Every move general manager Dave Gettleman makes should be geared towards empowering his young running back and collecting talent with upside. Paying Tate at least $23.5 million does neither.

Unless Gettleman has some crazy master plan everyone on the planet is missing, he’s clearly in way over his head.