It turned out that the Giants trading Leonard Williams was more a case of receiving an offer you can’t refuse rather than the start of a fire sale.
The Giants kept intact their secondary — and the rest of their team — Tuesday by staying quiet on the final day of the season to make trades.
In fact, their biggest moves of the day were signing Tommy DeVito — who completed 2 of 7 passes for minus-1 yard last week in his NFL debut — to the active roster and veteran Matt Barkley to the practice squad to set up a backup quarterback competition while Tyrod Taylor (rib cage) is sidelined.
Neither cornerback Adoree’ Jackson nor safety Xavier McKinney — two prime candidates to follow Williams out the door — was traded.
And the Giants stuck to their word by turning away all interest in running back Saquon Barkley because both sides still have hope of working out a multiyear extension.
Though Jackson and McKinney both are on expiring deals, the circumstances around retaining them are very different.
Jackson, who had one of the best 10-game stretches of his career before a knee injury last season, has slipped to the No. 112-ranked cornerback (out of 116) by Pro Football Focus.
He is owed $5.5 million over the rest of the season and seems to have been supplanted as the Giants’ top cornerback by rookie Deonte Banks.
The Giants could not restructure the 28-year-old Jackson’s contract to pick up some money and make it more attractive for another team to acquire in exchange for draft picks — as they did to entice the Seahawks into giving up second- and fifth-round picks for Williams — because the NFL-imposed deadline for that action was Monday.
The return for Williams looked like a bigger heist after the 49ers parted with just a third-rounder to land edge rusher Chase Young from the Commanders.
The decision to keep McKinney, 24, is interesting because he is only owed $877,117.
That price is a bargain for PFF’s No. 39-ranked safety and one of two Giants (alongside linebacker Bobby Okereke) to play every defensive snap this season.
But McKinney figures to be seeking a free-agent contract on the high end of the safety market.
The Giants and McKinney’s agent David Mulugheta — who has a long history of securing record-setting deals for defensive backs, including taking Landon Collins from New York to Washington in 2019 — agreed to put off negotiations until after the season.
It could have been a very different deadline for the Giants (2-6) had the first half of the season gone closer to preseason expectation and created a “buyer” situation.
General manager Joe Schoen and his lieutenants check in regularly with all teams about availability, and one possible trade partner could have been the Buccaneers if receivers Chris Godwin (who fits the Giants’ mold for positional versatility) or Mike Evans (half-season rental) had been made available.
Instead, the Buccaneers are in the race in the mediocre NFC South, while the Giants are clinging to hopes of a major turnaround.
The Giants also did not trade seldom-used free-agent-to-be receiver Parris Campbell, who it was thought might be on the move in a late-round pick swap like the Jets-Chiefs did with Mecole Hardman and Rams-Falcons did with Van Jefferson.