Getty The New York Giants have waived cornerback Sam Beal.
The Sam Beal project has officially come to a disappointing end in East Rutherford.
On Tuesday, November 9, the New York Giants announced that they are waiving the fourth-year cornerback out of Western Michigan.
ROSTER MOVE: The Giants waived DB Sam Beal.
Beal was selected by the Giants in the 2018 supplemental draft. As a result, the team forfeited a third-round pick to grab him.
Although Beal was considered to be a steal, who was projected to be a first-round pick if he entered the NFL draft, his tenure in New York was riddled with injuries.
At the beginning of his first NFL training camp, Beal suffered a season-ending shoulder injury that torpedoed his entire rookie campaign.
And at the start of the 2019 season, Beal landed on injured reserve with a hamstring issue. He would return on November 5 to appear in six games, recording 26 tackles, one tackle for a loss and one pass defensed in 2019.
Last year, the 25-year-old opted out of playing for the Giants due to concerns over the Covid-19 pandemic.
While the Giants chose to hang onto Beal this season, despite pleading guilty to a pair of gun charges in June which landed him on probation until 2022, he only played in three games and the team decided to cut ties with him this afternoon.
Unfortunately, the Giants were never really able to see what Beal could bring to the table due to his inability to stay on the field. In four seasons, Beal appeared in a total of just nine games for the Giants.
Now, the failure of Beal can be chalked up as another third-round miss for Dave Gettleman and the Giants’ front office.
More 3rd-Round Busts
Beyond Beal, Gettleman and the Giants have had their fair share of misses in the third-round of the NFL draft since 2018.
Gettleman selected B.J. Hill and Lorenzo Carter in the third-round in ’18, but both players have experienced a steady decline since producing promising rookie seasons.
During this past training camp, Gettleman traded Hill to the Cincinnati Bengals in exchange for center Billy Price.
As for Carter, he has dealt with an ankle injury this year, tore his achilles in 2020 and his contract is set to expire after the season.
In 2019, Gettleman chose edge rusher Oshane Ximines out of Old Dominion with the 95th pick in the draft.
But after a solid rookie campaign of his own where he notched 4.5 sacks, Ximines went down with a season-ending shoulder injury last season and has underperformed in 2021, which led to the decision to make him a healthy scratch against the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday.
Ximines has seemingly lost his starting job to rookie edge rushers Azeez Ojulari and Quincy Roche, who have stepped up for the Giants over the past several weeks.
The last two third-round choices for the Giants were offensive tackle Matt Peart and cornerback Aaron Robinson.
And while Peart flashed potential during his rookie season last year, he lost the starting right tackle job to Nate Solder in training camp and has struggled since taking over for the injured Andrew Thomas.
For Robinson, he started his first season in the NFL on the reserve/PUP list. The Giants activated him on November 1, and he has logged a total of 16 defensive snaps in his first two career games.
Although Robinson has yet to get a chance to show what he can do, the selection just continues to prove the lack of impact players the Giants current regime has been able to find in the third-round of the draft.
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Ximines’ Spot in Jeopardy
Speaking of Ximines, the Giants made him a healthy scratch on Sunday due to their desire to have Trent Harris take his spot.
And one of the reasons the team likes Harris is due to his ability to contribute on special teams, which makes him more valuable than Ximines.
Alas, the Giants have now elevated Harris from the practice squad twice (the maximum) and that means they must sign him to the active roster in order to hang onto him.
As a result, Ximines could in fact lose his roster spot permanently to Harris due to his nonexistent performance this season (12 tackles, 0 sacks, two quarterback hits).