Some NFL careers fade quietly. Others unravel in plain sight. For the Giants, the Evan Neal chapter has turned into the latter — a highly public, deeply frustrating decline that reached its final stage this weekend when the team placed the former seventh overall pick on injured reserve.
A hamstring injury during practice ended any remote chance of late-season action, but in truth, the Giants had already moved on long before Saturday’s transaction.
This wasn’t just an injury update. It was the organization acknowledging what everyone already knew: the Evan Neal era in New York is effectively over. And to be quite honest, it never even really began.
Evan Neal, NFL: New York Giants Training Camp
Credit: Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images
A first-round pick who never found his footing with the Giants
The Giants drafted Neal in 2022 believing they were getting a cornerstone tackle out of Alabama — someone who would anchor the right side of the offensive line for a decade. Instead, they got one of the most perplexing developmental stalls in recent team history.
Neal struggled immediately as a rookie and never meaningfully progressed. His technique was inconsistent. His footwork never stabilized. His strength advantage from college disappeared against NFL edge rushers. And every attempt to simplify his responsibilities seemed to make him look more tentative, not more comfortable.
Last season offered a fuller picture of the problem. Across 459 snaps at right tackle, he allowed 17 pressures, two sacks, and committed six penalties. On paper, that doesn’t look disastrous, but the film told a harsher truth: he rarely won clean reps, and when he lost, he lost badly. The Giants couldn’t trust him in pass protection, and the run game didn’t look any better with him on the field.
When the Giants declined his fifth-year option this spring, the writing was already on the wall.
A move to guard that never materialized into actual playing time
In an effort to salvage the pick, the Giants transitioned Neal to offensive guard — a shift many analysts suggested back in 2022. The thought was simple: reduce the space he has to defend, let him play more downhill, and limit the exposure to speed and counters.
It didn’t matter. Neal never saw a snap this season. Despite being healthy for most of the year, he was a healthy scratch in nearly every game, unable to convince the coaching staff he deserved even a depth role. It’s rare — borderline unheard of — for a former top-10 pick to be completely phased out of the lineup by Year 3 unless the team has fully lost confidence.
That’s exactly where the Giants landed.
A surprising injury that ends a season that never began
The hamstring injury that landed Neal on injured reserve came as a surprise, if only because he hasn’t played a down all year. Suffering a major soft-tissue injury without game action underscores just how far he’s slid within the team’s structure. A player who isn’t contributing on Sundays needs to prove reliability during the week. Neal couldn’t even stay healthy through practice.
With the injury, his season is officially over. In reality, his Giants tenure ended months ago.
What comes next — and what this means for the Giants
Neal will hit free agency after the season, and it’s unlikely the Giants will even entertain bringing him back. Sometimes a change of scenery rescues a stalled career, but Neal will have to rebuild his value from the ground up. For the Giants, the focus shifts entirely to the future — and to correcting one of the franchise’s most painful draft misses in recent memory.
They’ve already begun reshaping the offensive line through coaching changes and new additions, and removing Neal from the equation gives them a cleaner slate heading into 2026.
Some picks simply never work out. Evan Neal became one of them. And now, at last, the Giants can move forward without pretending the situation might someday turn around.