Andrew Thomas won’t report to Giants until he has a contract

New York Giants’ first-round pick Andrew Thomas has arrived in New Jersey, but won’t do anything until he has agreed to a deal with the team, a source confirms. Rookies are beginning their first round of COVID-19 testing on Thursday.

Rookie salaries are slotted per the salary cap. As the No. 4 overall pick, Thomas’s four-year rookie deal is expected to be worth $32.345 million over the length of the deal. His 2020 cap hit is expected to be $5.881 million.

So, if the exact dollar amount in a rookie deal is already known, what is there to negotiate? Agent Leigh Steinberg explained much of that in a recent column for ‘Touchdown Wire’. Here is part of what Steinberg wrote:

Incentives are largely nonexistent in rookie contracts today, because the reward counts immediately against the cap — even if the bonus threshold is never achieved and paid. The total cap number of all drafted rookies must add up to the salary cap number for rookies overall.

Creativity and structural advantages can still come into rookie cap negotiations in a variety of ways. Payment of the signing bonus is one area of negotiability. Teams want to spread payments out over several years to retain use of cash. Owners also prefer to make bonus payments at times when revenue comes to them.

Players would rather have the fastest payout. My business partner, Chris Cabott, has been aggressive in trying to create timely payouts for clients. The tax rate in the state where a player resides may be lower than the one where he plays his home games. California has a maximum state tax rate of 13.3% while states such as Texas, Washington, Florida and Nevada have no state income tax. Bonuses paid in the current year to a resident of a state without income tax do not have state tax taken from them. Bonus money paid in the following years would be taxed if the team plays in a state with income tax.

Long story short, when Thomas’s reps and the Giants agree on all of the particulars and he is ready to put pen to paper he will get to work protecting Daniel Jones and blocking for Saquon Barkley.

The guess here is that isn’t going to take long.

Other rookie contract updates

We know that as of now linebacker Tae Crowder, the 255th and final pick of the draft, is the only Giants’ rookie to have signed his contract.

We reported Wednesday that third-round pick Matt Peart had agreed to terms. Other rookies reported by multiple sources to have agreed to terms are fourth-round pick Darnay Holmes, fifth-round pick Shane Lemieux and sixth-round pick Cam Brown.