NEW YORK — Logan Ryan is finished as a Giant.
New GM Joe Schoen released the defensive captain and veteran safety on Thursday, just as the New York Daily News reported the team likely would in late February.
“Thank you NY,” Ryan wrote on Twitter and Instagram with a heart emoji. “Captain Log Out.”
This move was not motivated by the Giants’ need for salary cap space.
The Giants save only $775,000 in cap space by cutting Ryan. They are eating $11.45 million in dead money to get rid of a player whose cap hit would have been $12.225 million if he’d stayed.
This move was made because there were people in the Giants’ front office who wanted to move on from Ryan the player, personality and locker room leader.
Ryan was the face of the previous regime’s and locker room’s leadership and accountability. Clearly, the Giants’ organization has different ideas of who will be their conduits to the media, locker room and field for Schoen and Brian Daboll.
The Giants saved $3 million in cash by cutting Ryan, 31, before Saturday. He had $5.5 million of his $9.25 million salary for 2022 already guaranteed, and another $3 million would have become guaranteed Saturday.
Still, Ryan was the team’s best tackler last season. He wore the green dot as the defensive play-caller when needed. He missed only one game in two seasons (because of a COVID-19 positive).
He was the 2020 media good guy award winner during the difficult pandemic season. And he was the first player to diplomatically take reporters’ questions on Joe Judge’s job status on Black Monday even though the players had no answers.
Defensive coordinator Pat Graham’s Giants defense was the highlight of the past two seasons under Judge, and Ryan was one of that unit’s primary leaders. He was second on the team in tackles both seasons, with 94 in 2020 and 117 in 2021.
He was a big part of the Giants’ biggest win since 2016: a 17-12 road upset victory of Russell Wilson’s Seattle Seahawks in December 2020. The Giants even signed him to a contract extension on Christmas Day 2020, rewarding a player who’d signed here on a flier late that summer.
Ryan, a longtime corner, has remade himself later in his career to become a versatile safety. His game wasn’t perfect down the stretch of last season, but he was one of this team’s brightest spots the past two years on the Giants’ best side of the ball.
The Giants, it can be argued easily, were playing winning football on defense for the most part, undone by a pathetic offense and bad punter.
Since, Graham left for the Las Vegas Raiders, even though the Giants wanted him to return. Middle linebacker Blake Martinez had to take a pay cut to stay. Ryan is gone to free agency. And corner James Bradberry’s status is in limbo due to his large 2022 salary cap hit, made worse by a midseason contract restructure with the team.
Other than that, everything’s fine.
