Just as David Bakhtiari and Trent Williams benefited from Laremy Tunsil‘s first Texans extension, a younger crop of left tackles will move into that position after Houston locked down its left-sider once again.
Tunsil signed a three-year, $75MM deal to once again raise the ceiling at his position. Not only is Tunsil the NFL’s highest-paid left tackle, only two other offensive linemen — Williams and Bakhtiari — come within $4MM in AAV of Houston’s top blocker. Teams could look to categorize Tunsil’s latest deal as an outlier, but as younger tackles move into position for extensions, this contract — for a 29-year-old lineman — will undoubtedly become a discussion point.
This will now affect the Giants. Tunsil’s AAV will be the floor for Andrew Thomas, according to The Athletic’s Dan Duggan (subscription required). The Giants will have the 2020 first-round pick under contract for two more seasons — once they pick up his fifth-year option by May — but Duggan adds the team is interested in extending its ascending left tackle early.
A 2023 extension for Thomas, 24, would be a move slightly out of step with teams’ strategies with young tackles. But not all of them. Between 2011-19, 13 first-round tackles signed extensions. Of those, four did so with two years of rookie-contract control remaining (Kolton Miller, Eric Fisher, Lane Johnson, Tyron Smith). And Smith’s Cowboys extension — which somehow remains an active contract, despite it being signed in 2014 — was an outlier due to its eight-year length. The rest of the extended tackles signed deals in their contract years.
The Giants have Dexter Lawrence as a 2023 extension priority, with the cornerstone defensive tackle going into his fifth-year option season, and are carrying a $10.1MM Saquon Barkley franchise tag. The Giants also have Leonard Williams attached to a $32.3MM cap number in the third and final year of his contract. These matters being unresolved would point to the team tabling Thomas’ extension to 2024. (The team holds just $2.2MM in cap space.) Precedent, for the most part, would make this the more logical conclusion. The left tackle market also might not move too much between now and the ’24 offseason, with no high-end blindsiders entering contract years.
That said, the salary cap will make another jump in 2024. And another strong Thomas season would bolster his value. As such, the Giants — should they extend Barkley to reduce his 2023 cap number —…