With the Giants yanking a long-term offer that defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul wasn’t going to accept, it’s now likely that he’ll spend 2015 under the one-year franchise tag. But if he’s going to miss all of training camp and possibly the start of the regular season as he recovers from hand injuries suffered during a fireworks mishap, his best move could be to not sign the tender until he’s cleared to play.
By showing up before he’s ready, Pierre-Paul forces the Giants to decide what to do with him. While it would be easy to carry him on the non-football injury list through the preseason, a decision would have to be made before Week One: Move him to the active roster (and pay him) or keep him on NFI (and not pay him, if the Giants so choose) for at least the first six weeks of the regular season.
If Pierre-Paul is on track to be cleared in, for example, the middle of September, a decision to stay away until he’s cleared would allow the Giants to activate him as soon as he’s ready to go, circumventing the requisite six-week absence arising from the regular-season NFI list.
These various moving parts suggest that it would make far more sense for the Giants and Pierre-Paul to work cooperatively toward finding a solution, with a clear understanding as to whether the Giants would or wouldn’t pay Pierre-Paul while on NFI being the most important factor in their talks. While the most important factor for Pierre-Paul currently remains getting himself healthy, a complicated situation looms in September, with more than $870,000 on the line, each and every week.