NY Giants fill huge hole at free safety with second-round pick

The NY Giants continued to fill meaningful holes during the 2020 NFL Draft on Friday night, as Dave Gettleman shored up the team’s safety group.

I’ve almost never been as excited as I was watching the end of the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft play out, as the players that kept getting selected (corners, runningbacks) were players that were not feasible on the NY Giants’ radar.

Due to this, by the time the round ended, I had nine players with round one grades that made sense for the NY Giants to select with their #36 pick. You don’t have to be a math major to figure out that that put the team is a strong spot heading into day two.

I featured Mckinney in my top 5 players to consider with the #36 pick earlier in the day.

Dave Gettleman continued his strong draft by taking the consensus best safety in the entire draft – there wasn’t one selected in the entire first round – who gives Big Blue a huge upgrade at the ever-important free safety position.

For those that will say ‘but we have Julian Love‘, Love’s natural position is slot cornerback in the NFL, and he’ll now slide over there and fill another hole — just holes getting filled, everywhere!

https://twitter.com/mckinney15__/status/1253116932041162752

ESPN had Mckinney rated as the #17 rated player overall, so landing him at #36 at such a dire position of need is a big deal. A two-year starter at Alabama, Mckinney was very productive over his 28 starts, racking up 104 tackles (11.5 for loss), 6 sacks, two interceptions, and 15 passes defended.

Standing at 6’1 and weighing 205 pounds, Mckinney’s got great size for a modern-day safety and should flourish as a jack-of-all-trades guy in the NFL. He can legit play the deep-half, single-high safety position too, which is really what the NY Giants need.

There’s little doubt that Alabama head coach, Nick Saban, put in a good word for Mckinney with his former colleague Joe Judge.