Think like a pro! Final thoughts on Giants draft

April 19, 2020

We weren’t going to post any additional comments on the Giants 2020 draft – we’ll find out soon enough in four days – but we keep hearing people, including some in the media who should know better, talking about the Giants having to decide whether it will be ‘Simmons or Wirfs’ when they make the 4th pick overall on Thursday evening. That implies that the Giants will be checking off who comes off the board ahead of them and making a decision based on who best fits their value/needs parameters. Makes sense, but teams just don’t operate that way at the draft.

In fact, I have no idea who the Giants are going to select with their first pick this week. I doubt very much anyone in the media knows. But I do know who does know. The Giants know! Fact is, the Giants will already have a plan in place (and if they don’t, somebody should in fact be fired.) And again, I don’t what their particular plan is, but I do know its going to be one of two things. Either the Giants have A) identified a player, or possibly players, that they really like and, everything else being equal, they will be selecting that player. Or the Giants have B) identified a particular position that they want to address and will do their best to manipulate the board to go after a player they really like at that position. I realize that this sounds a bit like something straight from Captain Obvious, but its not; these are two very different approaches which may very well need quite differing strategies.

If the Giants have in fact opted for Plan A, and they have done so roughly in half the drafts in the past couple of decades – think Eli, Shockey, Kenny Phillips, and JPP, not to mention Saquon and Dan Jones the past couple of years, the players likely to be on their short list are Isaiah Simmons and possibly Derrick Brown and Jeff Okudah. Not that we know for sure, and the Giants could always have a widely divergent board, but just about everything we have heard the past couple of months is that after Joe Burrow and Chase Young, the players that teams around the league really like, with very few exceptions, are Simmons, Brown and Okudah.

On the other hand, if the Giants have chosen to take the targeted position, and they have also taken that approach in roughly half of the other drafts since 2000 – think CB Will Allen in 2001, Aaron Ross, Nicks, Odell and Flowers, one doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out it is almost assuredly going to be the offensive line, although we continue to suggest that nobody should be totally surprised if the Giants pull a fast one and target a WR. And since it doesn’t appear that any other team is likely to select an OT, at least until deeper into the top ten, if the OL were in fact the Giants target then they could probably comfortably consider trading down 3-4 spots, if for no other reason than to stick to their board.

We were hoping to be able to get some clues as to what the Giants have planned from last week’s pre-draft pressers by Dave Gettleman and Joe Judge. Unfortunately, though, there wasn’t much there there beyond the typical coach/GM speak (which is just as well because if we can figure stuff out then so can other teams.) In fact, if anything, it appeared there were possibly some mixed messages from the two. Judge, for example, sounded exactly like what one would expect from a first year head coach with aspirations to build a championship football team. Most notably perhaps, Judge indicated he really didn’t care all that much what a player was going to contribute in 2020. What he was really trying to do was project which players were going to have the biggest impact 2-3 years down the road. In that sense, he talked about things like upside and versatility which fit much more with a Plan A approach.

In contrast, we thought Gettleman was somewhat muted, although 4-12 and 5-9 seasons can do that to you. (We also weren’t quite sure what to make of the fact that Gettleman actually had a couple of interviews last week in which he was accompanied by Assistant G.M. Kevin Abrams to one and Director of Scouting Chris Pettit to the other, whereas as in the past he usually was by himself, but we’ll leave that one for another day.) What did jump out from Gettleman’s presser, though, was the fact that he indicated that the Giants would seriously consider trading down this week. Normally, a team that is targeting a particular player they really like doesn’t trade down; they go after the guy.

However, there were a couple of other notable references in Gettleman’s trade. First, he indicated that he’d be making some calls this week. Normally, though, a team looking to trade down let’s it be known that the pick is available and waits for the calls to come in, rather than initiating the contact. The fact that Gettleman is initiating the calls also tends to indicate that the Giants likely haven’t received many, if any nibbles to date, although that may simply reflect that no one is trading with the Giants until they know what the Lions do with the 3rd pick. Gettleman also indicated that while he’d like to have the parameters for any deal worked out ahead of the draft, they wouldn’t be finalizing any trade until the Giants were actually on the clock on Thursday. What that could suggest is that the Giants would possibly only consider trading down if the player they wanted was no longer available. Its also possible that the Giants are also only willing to trade with Miami and the LA Chargers, who pick 5th and 6th respectively, and are believed to be interested in moving up a spot or two to ensure getting one of QBs Justin Herbert and Tua Tagovailoa. In such a scenario the Giants could drop down a spot or two, add a mid-round pick – say a 3rd to recoup the Williams pick, and still get the player they wanted. Time will tell.

Couple of other points that we’ll make in closing. One, as we mentioned in another article earlier today, one of the things we are hearing is that no one should be surprised if there is a run on WRs once the top 6-7 elite players come off the board. Essentially, there appears to be a number of teams, including the Jets, Vegas, Denver, Atlanta and Philly itching to get one of WRs, CeeDee Lamb, Jerry Jeudy or Henry Ruggs. And at this rate, they may all have to move up to get their guy. Its not clear what that means for the Giants, but what it does suggest is that if the WR run does take place then in all likelihood the OTs are going to pushed down. Stay tuned!

We’ve also had a number (well actually more than a number) of emails basically asking what the heck the Giants would do with Derrick Brown if they did indeed select him at #4, given that DT was already one of the team’s few strengths. And its a good question. Indeed, we are hardly proponents of a Brown pick, but remember this isn’t really about this year, its about 2-3 years down the road. Indeed, imagine in 2022 and beyond the Giants anchor their defense with a couple of athletic monsters in Brown and Dex Lawrence. Obviously, the Giants would also have had to add other building blocks to the defense, but its hard to argue that wouldn’t be a nice place to start. And it follows from an article we published a few weeks ago questioning whether we have the draft all wrong; that in fact rather than using the draft to fill weaknesses, maybe what teams should be thinking about is drafting to strength to build a dynamic unit or two that’s going to be the group that wins games for them.

Please take care!! ed