Twenty-seven starts for a top-10 pick
The Giants are releasing Evan Neal, according to multiple reports, four years after taking him seventh overall in the 2022 draft.
The counting does not take long. Twenty-nine regular-season appearances, 27 starts, every one of them at right tackle. Add the two playoff games he started as a rookie and that is the complete New York record of a lineman drafted to hold down a side for a decade.
Thirteen of those starts came in his first season. Across the two years that followed he got into 16 games and started 14 of them. The Giants then moved him inside to right guard during the 2025 offseason, the standard reset for a tackle struggling on the edge. He never took a regular-season snap at the new spot. A hamstring injury put him on injured reserve in November and his 2025 ended at zero snaps.
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A second chance that lasted one camp
Neal reached unrestricted free agency in the spring and re-signed with New York in March. The deal handed him a route back with the organization that drafted him, this time competing for a reserve job along the line rather than a starting role.
He did not survive the trim to 53 players. He is 25 years old.
The physical profile never went anywhere. Six foot seven, 340 pounds, an All-American at Alabama who started at left guard, right tackle and left tackle across his college career. He was the second offensive lineman off the board in 2022, selected immediately after Carolina took Ikem Ekwonu.
Four drafts later, a player taken inside the top 10 goes looking for a roster spot in the first week of September.
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