The New York Giants thought enough of offensive tackle Evan Neal to make him the seventh selection in the 2022 NFL Draft. They are scheduled to pay him $4.053 million during the 2025 season. But do they still think enough of the former Alabama All-American to guarantee Neal $16.685 million for the 2026 season?

It’s a question the Giants will answer in the next two months.

Like all first-round picks, Neal signed a four-year contract with a team option for a fifth season. Of his original $24.551 million deal, Neal still has a $1.1 million base salary and a $2.953 roster bonus (due the third day of training camp) coming in 2025.

New York will have to decide to use its fifth-year option before Neal gets that money. The deadline to exercise the option is May 1, and if the Giants pick it up, they will guarantee Neal a $16.685 million payday for the 2026 season 16 months before that campaign starts.

Neal’s three-year tenure with New York began with seven straight starts and ended with seven straight starts (until he missed the Giants’ 2024 season finale because of hip and rib injuries). But in between, Neal missed 22 of New York’s 44 regular-season games.

After missing four games in 2022 and 10 games in 2023, Neal had ankle surgery on Jan. 2, 2024, spent the first three weeks of training camp on the physically-unable-to-perform list and opened the season as the backup to free-agent signee Jermaine Eluemunor at right tackle.

Neal returned to the starting spot on Nov. 10 when Eluemunor moved to left tackle after Andrew Thomas sustained a season-ending injury.

With the NFL’s announcement of a $279.2 million salary cap for 2025 — $23.8 million more than the 2024 season — came the price tags of the fifth-year options for the first-round selections in the 2022 NFL Draft.

Neal’s $16.685 million is the average of the third through 25th highest salaries among offensive linemen over the past five seasons

Fifth-year options come in four designations, and Neal is in the most inexpensive of the tiers.

The levels include:

• Players who have been selected for at least two Pro Bowls on the original ballot for the all-star event.
• Players who have been selected for one Pro Bowl on the original ballot.
• Players who have not been Pro Bowlers but have played at least 75 percent of the offensive or defensive snaps in two seasons or 50 percent of the overall snaps in three seasons.
• Players who have not reached the Pro Bowl or the playing-time standards.

Neal barely missed landing in the next tier up – 50 percent of the overall snaps in three seasons — which would have pushed his 2026 price to $17.56 million.

Neal played 1,656 of the Giants’ 3,364 offensive snaps over the past three seasons. He came up 26 short of playing half of New York’s offensive snaps.

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X at @AMarkG1.