5 reasons NY Giants are 0-5 start with Dave Gettleman’s flawed roster building

Dave Gettleman’s poor drafting

Debate over positional value when it comes to choosing running back Saquon Barkley No. 2 overall in the misguided hope he would help drag Eli Manning on one last playoff run aside, Gettleman has not done nearly enough to bolster the talent throughout the depth chart in the draft.

With the exception of Barkley (when healthy, which is exceedingly rare with the running back out for the season with a torn ACL after missing 13 games last season with a high-ankle sprain), nose tackle Dexter Lawrence looks like the only “cornerstone” player Gettleman has drafted in the first round.

First-round pick DeAndre Baker is facing four counts of armed robbery with a firearm, Daniel Jones flashes moments of tantalizing potential but can’t seem to consistently protect the football, Will Hernandez looks like a mediocre at best offensive lineman, and Lorenzo Carter has upside but has yet to take a leap towards showing double-digit sack potential.

Wide receiver Darius Slayton, a fifth-round choice in 2019, at times looks like a top receiver but goes stretches where he’s a non-factor.

Meanwhile, Gettleman traded away an elite gamebreaker and generational talent at wide receiver in Odell Beckham Jr.

The harsh reality the Giants are facing is that they simply do not have enough superstar caliber players on the roster. For every James Bradberry or Lawrence, there’s a Ryan Lewis, Sam Beal, or Ryan Connelly that never quite worked out and were a waste of resources.

Don’t forget, Gettleman traded a third-round pick for Leonard Williams, hoping to give a 2-6 team a shot in the arm and evaluate if he was worth signing as a free agent a few months later.

This roster is not deep enough, talented enough, or experienced enough to win around a quarterback who hasn’t proven capable of elevating the players around him, whom the organization must decide in 18 months or so whether to make him one of the NFL’s highest-paid players at his position.

It shouldn’t be surprising that the Giants are 0-5, the only shocker would be if Gettleman is allowed to oversee another trade deadline later this month …