Shep is back for year seven.
Wide receiver Sterling Shepard is returning to the Giants on a restructured, one-year contract, a source confirmed to the Daily News early Thursday evening.
Shepard’s existing contract ran through 2023. He is making financial concessions as he returns from a torn left Achilles in exchange for hitting free agency a year earlier.
The financial terms of the new deal were not immediately disclosed.
The Giants would have had to eat $7.9 million in dead money this season if they’d cut Shepard outright and would have saved only $4.5 million against the salary cap.
The restructure will lower Shepard’s $8.475 million scheduled salary to an undisclosed number, lower his scheduled $12.4 million salary cap hit, and wipe out next season’s scheduled $13.4 million cap hit altogether.
Shepard’s cap hits for the 2022 and 2023 seasons were so high because the Giants restructured his contract in September. The team was badly cap-strapped throughout the 2021 season, which resulted in several player restructures just to stay afloat.
They converted $5.9 million of his base salary into a signing bonus in September and, in the process, added $1.9 million to his 2022 and 2023 cap hits.
Now, Shepard, 29, the longest-tenured Giant, will return for a seventh season with the team that drafted him in the 2016 second round out of Oklahoma.
His contract restructure is one of several moves GM Joe Schoen is making to try to clean up the Giants’ salary cap. And Thursday’s agreement will likely kick off a flurry of activity in the next few days before the 2022 league year opens next Wednesday.
Corner James Bradberry is a trade or release candidate. Linebacker Blake Martinez (torn ACL) may take a pay cut or end up being released. And safety Logan Ryan is in jeopardy, even though cutting him wouldn’t save meaningful money.
The News first reported in late February that there are people in the Giants’ front office who want to move on from Ryan.
Schoen also has left the door open to trading Saquon Barkley at the right price, and recent reports oddly have connected the Giants to Bills free agent quarterback Mitchell Trubisky as possible training camp competition for Daniel Jones.
In the coming days, Schoen’s actions will say more than any words he has spoken in press conferences to date.
