Jason Pierre-Paul wants to get paid because no one else is ‘doing it with 7 and a half fingers’

Due to a groin injury he suffered late in the season, New York Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul did not play in the Giants’ 38-13 loss against the Green Bay Packers in the Wild Card round.

Pierre-Paul will have to wait until next season to return to the field, but he has some hurdles to jump over before that. He is scheduled to become a free agent this offseason, and the veteran defensive end said he will sign a longer contract this time around.

Last offseason, Pierre-Paul signed a one-year deal with the Giants because the organization wanted to see how he would perform after offseason surgery on his mangled hand. During a fireworks incident on the Fourth of July in 2015, he damaged two fingers and lost another.

Because of that, he had to play with a special glove and only appeared in eight games in 2015. When he re-signed with the Giants last March, he said he had “unfinished business” with New York. Now, he isn’t interested in signing a one-year deal.

Pierre-Paul appeared in 12 games and racked up 53 tackles, seven sacks, and three forced fumbles. Before he went down with groin injury, he was generating constant pressure on opposing quarterbacks. In a two-game span against the Chicago Bears and Cleveland Browns, he recorded 5.5 sacks.

Pierre-Paul missed the last four games of the regular season after undergoing surgery to repair his groin and a sports hernia injury he suffered last month. During New York’s Week 13 loss against the Pittsburgh Steelers, he left the game late in the first half due to a groin injury and did not return.

Even though the veteran defensive end was out for New York’s final four games of the season regular season and in the Wild Card round, the defense was still dominant until that second half of the Packers game. The Giants won three of their remaining four regular season games, and surrendered only 11.75 points per game over that four-game span.

The Packers will move on to face the Dallas Cowboys in the divisional round, but Pierre-Paul said if the Giants had walked away victorious, he would have played against Dallas.

New York’s defense played well against Green Bay in the first half, but quarterback Aaron Rodgers shredded it in the second. He finished the game with 362 yards and four touchdowns. Although the Giants sacked Rodgers five times, they couldn’t get consistent pressure on him, so he stood in many clean pockets and had a lot of time to make decisions.

It’s highly unlikely that Pierre-Paul would have altered the outcome of that game, but the Giants could have benefited from his presence on the field. Other teams could use a talented player like Pierre-Paul, too. So if the Giants are not willing to pay him this offseason, another team will.