Giants Report: New Year’s thoughts

December 23, 2024

Needless to say we have literally been besieged of late with correspondence from our Giant fans friends bemoaning the fact that they feel that all they got for Christmas was this year was a lousy lump of coal! Needless to say we share the disappointment and frustration with what’s gone on with the team this fall. At the same time, though, if makes anybody feel any better looking ahead to the New Year, we are actually kind of excited. The reality is, again in our humble view, that as bad as this season has been, and it has been BAD, right now the Giants are right where they need to be sitting on the #1 pick in the upcoming draft. They desperately need a QB and, assuming of course they don’t do something stupid like go out and win one of their last two games, this is where you want to be to have the best shot at getting one in the draft.

We have also received a lot of missives either bemoaning the fact that this year’s QB class may not be all that great. Fact is that neither of the top two QB prospects this year – Shedeur Sanders of Colorado and Miami’s Cam Ward – are in the same class as ‘can’t miss’ recent prospects like Trevor Lawrence, Joe Burrow and Caleb Williams, but they are still very good prospects. Recall, for example, that at this time last year, or at least before he opted to return to school, Sanders was very much being talked about in the same breath as Williams and Drake Maye at the top of the 2024 board and he actually had a better year this year than last, although he didn’t get quite the same national attention. Meanwhile, Ward is graded a little lower than Sanders right now, but does currently have a higher grade than Maye when all was said and done last spring. I think we can also say with some certainty that both are better prospects than the three guys – Penix, McCarthy and Nix – that the Giants passed on when they selected Malik Nabers with the 6th pick overall last April. , Bottom line is they are both good prospects and in a year when its not clear there really are that many other true elite prospects at other positions out there both are certainly worthy of the first pick overall.

We have also been asked numerous times whether we like Sanders or Ward more.And if given our druthers, we’d probably lean toward Ward if we were making the choice, although to be honest we’d be happy with either. Neither is a prototype pocket passer of yore, but both are artful distributors of the ball; in the end we give a slight edge to Ward as he will push the ball down the field, plus he’s a better athlete who will make plays with his legs.

However, the reality is that it doesn’t matter who we like or who anyone else really likes. Fact is as we like to say when it comes to the draft nobody really knows much of anything for sure. What NFL teams do know is which prospects have the best chance of being a good player, but there is nobody in the league anywhere who can tell you which of the those best prospects, or any prospect for that matter, will be good players and which will be busts. Indeed, one only has to look at the recent top QB picks to realize that. Of the three ‘can’t miss’ guys which we mentioned above, for example, only Burrow has lived up to the hype to date. In fact, in both the past two drafts the second QB selected has outperformed by a relatively large margin the guy taken ahead of him despite the fact that 32 of the NFL’s 32 GMs would have gone with the  guy picked at #1.

In fact, we have joked over time, that Joe Schoen, or whoever ultimately makes the pick for the Giants this year, would be just as likely to hit on their pick if they asked their significant other to make the pick based on the colors of their college unis! Indeed, in the end, you do what George Young famously once said: ‘you gather all the information you can about a player; you make the best decision you can; and then you cross your fingers and hope the guy can play and stays healthy. As a result, we caution that there are no guarantees when it comes to the draft and even if the Giants get the #1 pick there is no guarantee that the player they select will in fact be the answer. Indeed, based on recent history, we’d suggest the odds are only about 1 in 3 that a QB taken with a top 5 type pick ends up being a really good player. But the truth also is that that is a way higher probability than any QB taken outside the top ten is going to be a really good player. We also note that in passing when picking a QB you really aren’t just trying to fill a need in the traditional sense, but you are really hoping to hit on a really good player, because a really good QB is what you need to be a perennial contender.

As an aside, we have also had a number of people ask if the Giants might be better served trading out of the top pick, assuming they still have it, taking a QB like Jalen Milroe of Alabama further down the opening round and then using the extra picks acquired in trading out of #1 to build up the team around him. And while we never like to say never when it comes to such matters, well, see above. You want to get a shot at the best QB prospect you can and you’re not going to do that trading down. Plus, we really see the QBs in this year’s draft class other than Sanders and Ward and being more the kind of player that you’d like to bring to camp to see if their game might eventually translate to the NFL, but not the kind you hope you are going to be able to consider starting literally from day one.

While we really don’t expect the Giants to trade out of the #1 pick if they do end up with it, literally no matter what the offers, they very well may be a position to make a trade lite. The fact is that if they do with the #1 pick overall, they’ll also almost assuredly have the first picks on both the second and third days of the draft. And they especially may be in a position to trade the 33rd pick at the start of the second round as there are almost always teams that covet somebody that is still on the board at the end of the first night. In fact, the 2025 draft looks like it will be loaded along the defensive line and we’d love to see the Giants focus the rest of their premium picks on trying to build a killer D-line. Fact is the Giants defence has not been terrible this season. They’ve been middle of the pack, at least, statistically and may not be all that far away from being really good. Needless to say, the secondary, especially the corners, also need a major upgrade, although we’d be tempted to do that more thru free agency. As we have stated in the past, we believe that the draft should as much as possible be used to build units that win games, while you fill holes with free agency. The draft is just not very efficient to address specific needs that you just have to fill.

In that context, we’d also like to see the Giants to use free agency to do something, anything about the offence. For starters, if the Giants were in a position to make a splash FA signing we’d love to see them go after the best veteran receiver they can find to pair with Malik Nabers. If they are going to draft a QB with their #1 pick, they really have to give him something to work otherwise it might very well be more of the same. We’d also like to Giants to sign a vet C to at least come in and compete with JM Schmitz. Again, doesn’t have to be a $15M a year guy; just somebody who knows how to play the game. And while they are at it, maybe sign a couple more veteran swing G/Ts for depth. Kick Neal into OG and they might actually have a chance to field a least a relatively competitive OL.

In fact, we don’t think is in any way a two-win team. So many of those losses early in the season were close one-play games. Meanwhile, anybody who is still ranting and raving about the most recent loss or losses may be missing the forest for the trees. The Giants pretty much packed in the season the day they released Daniel Jones, the one QB on the roster who gave them at least a chance to win games. Indeed, for those keeping track of these things, for example, Drew Lock has one TD pass on the year while throwing 3 pick 6s which almost makes one fondly remember the otherwise utterly forgettable duo of Glennon and Fromm from a couple of years back.

In the end, to us this season has had the feeling more of a 1983 or 2003 type season in which the Giants entered with certain expectations, but ended up with a top 5 pick, but then won a Super Bowl just 3-4 years later, rather than say the two-win 1972 campaign which really was the start of 1970s slump. Again, nobody here is predicting the Giants are going to win a Super Bowl anytime soon, but if they can hit on a QB anything is possible because they do some other building blocks already in players like Lawrence, Thomas, Burns, and Nabers along with some of the other young players like Tracey, Nubin, and Phillips. Hang in there!