Linebacker Zach Brown and defensive tackle Johnathan Hankins are the only two players left unsigned or untagged in the top 50 on PFT’s list of 2017’s top free agents, but it appears one of those players could end his stay on the list pretty quickly.
Kim Jones of NFL Media reports that Hankins has a multi-year offer on the table to return to the Giants that “stacks up well” with the market that has developed for his services. That market obviously hasn’t been what Hankins was hoping to find and Giants co-owner John Mara suggested on Sunday that the team isn’t going to move much in order to get Hankins on board.
“There’s still one more piece out there that we’d like to keep, but we wanted to try to do that if possible without being irresponsible,” Mara said, via the New York Post. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. We certainly want him back, but it’s got to make sense for us. He’s an important part of our team, he’s a great kid, he’s young and he fits in very well with us.”
A Hankins return would allow the Giants to bring back all 11 of their starters from last season. That would seem to bode well for further improvement for a defense that took a big leap in 2016, but Hankins has to agree to the deal to make it happen.
