Harbaugh was asked why the Giants waited until a week before the season opener to cut Slayton.
"No strategy to it," he replied. "There's a lot of – there's a lot of factors. I mean, maybe you can get a trade. Maybe you try to wait as long as you can to see if you work out a contract change, right? There's a lot of reasons to it, which I really don't feel obligated to explain. I appreciate the questions. You kind of ask them kind of in a sharp way, like you're mad or something about it. I don't really get the emotion coming from you two guys, but we did it because it's the best thing for our team, and that's what we're doing going forward. "
Slayton's salary was a huge factor in his release. They were over the salary cap with the NFL accounting deadline approaching. Cutting Slayton saved approximately $3.16 million against the cap and put the Giants back into compliance.
That's the good news. The bad news is they had to absorb $12.75 million in dead cap charges and have no wide receiver other than Nabers who has a history with Dart.
Harbaugh tidied up his reasoning by pointing to the "several factors" behind Slayton's release.
"He worked hard. He worked extremely hard to get himself back from the injury," Harbaugh said. "I don't think he even – he feels like he's fully back yet, probably, but he will be at some point in time. And where we're standing right now, it's just not the best thing for us, but maybe not the best thing for him either. I don't know. We'll see how it goes. He's going to be fine. He's going to land somewhere, he's going to play football somewhere and we're going to move forward. So, that's how football goes. Nothing lasts forever. "
And that, as they say, is that.This article originally appeared on Giants Wire:
