Musical Chairs at DL

9 men, 8 chairs. Round and round we go, when the music stops, nobody knows.

Those were interesting comments from Tollefson last week. He is one of the lesser known subs who certainly gets enough time in the rotation as a DE. But does he even make the team?! Let’s do the math..

Assuming that Douzable, Evans, Henderson, Hill, Bryant and JClark all do not make the team…

Umenyiora
Tuck
Canty
Bernard
Robbins
Cofield
Tollefson
Kiwanuka
Alford

One of these 9 does not make it. This would imply a shorter list of Cofield/Robbins/Bernard/Alford/Tollefson. I am no doctor, so far be it for me to make a guess about Cofield and Robbins after surgery. I am going to go with Robbins on the PUP list for now so that the Giants take their time, keep him fresh on a longer timetable and have his knees (ETC!) ready for the 2nd half push and postseason. Intentionally speaking, that is a nice luxury to have. Is Robbins better than others on this list? Of course, when healthy, YES. 100% comebacks from microfracture surgery take time. If Robbins were to have a very good camp or even get a lot of reps, it would make this decision harder. Then I would suspect that 1 of these guys- Cofield/Tollefson/Alford gets cut. Normally Cofield would not be there, since he was a starter. But he had offseason surgery too. Drilling down.. Tollefson or Alford? I suspect that Reese would have a shot at getting a late round draft pick for one of them.

The one good thing about all of this is that the Giants are very deep here… nice problem to have. If the Giants stay healthy in camp and some team that is thin at DL does not, then look for the Giants to possibly deal one of them. Why? Because Defensive Linemen are grown, they are not born… another team could make one of these guys a starter and 3 years from now they could be a solid cog in their defense.

Wonder’s take on the logjam at DL? “Robbins might be cut period. We’ll have to see how Tollefson, Cofield, Alford, Bernard look like in camp.” That sounds a little harsh to me. His salary is a reasonable $2.1M in the last year of his contract. A cheap enough call option. I would think the Giants PUP him before they cut him. This way they have an option w/o taking up a roster spot. To be fair, the Giants probably don’t know exactly what they are going to do- they need to see how everyone is doing this summer at camp and then simply evaluate who makes the most sense to be on the roster.

Summary: Robbins microfracture+DL+32 years old= PUP.