The NY Giants stunned the football world in 2022 by not only making the playoffs, but beating the Vikings in the Wild Card Round. Most of the credit for the immensely successful 2022 campaign belongs to two men: Brian Daboll and Joe Schoen.
When Daboll and Schoen decided to defect to New York City from western New York last January, they inhertied a football team that was in salary cap hell and didn’t feature a lot of big-time talent. Schoen’s predecessor, the lamentable Dave Gettleman, constantly botched the NFL Draft, the main reason the Giants posted a 22-58 record over his tenure.
Schoen has repeatedly stated that he wants to build the Giants through the draft, something Gettleman failed to do. Here are five first-round mistakes that continue to haunt the NY Giants:
5. TE Evan Engram
The last first-round pick of the Jerry Reese era, Evan Engram was selected No. 23 overall in the 2017 draft out of Ole Miss. Engram was drafted to be a monstrous receiving tight end, but recorded just 17 touchdowns in five seasons in blue. Engram averged a pedstrain 565.5 yards a season, and just 34.9 yards a game.
Engram flashed his immense talent at times, but he will be most remembered for his back-breaking drops. The most famous play of Engram’s Giants tenure, a Week 7 drop in the 2020 season, which cost the Giants a playoff berth.
If Engram caught that beautiful pass from Jones not only would the Giants have clinched a road victory against Philadelphia, they would have ended up winning the NFC East. A painful memory Giants fans will never forget.
To make matters worse, three defensive All-Pro’s, TJ Watt, Tre’Davious White and Budda Baker, were all drafted in the next 12 selections after the Engram pick. The Giants have certainly had worse first-round picks than Engram, but his Giants tenure was rough, and that is putting it nicely.
4. RB Saquon Barkley
Hindsight is always 20/20. I would have taken Saquon Barkley No. 2 overall in the 2018 NFL Draft just like Dave Gettleman did. Looking back at it, taking a running back there is bad business.
This is taking nothing away from Barkley, he is a tremendous talent who has a legit case for being the best running back in the NFL. Regardless, NFL teams just simply cannot take a running back second overall. Not only do running backs have extremely short shelf lives, but they take the most hits and deal with injury problems – this has been the case with Saquon.
Additionally, good running backs are very easy to find in the later rounds of the draft. In this 2023 draft, there are mutiple running backs who project to get selected in the middle rounds that will start football games for teams next season.
Some of the most successful teams in the NFL like the Kansas City Chiefs, Buffalo Bills, and Philadelphia Eagles have adopted running back rotations, which allows them to invest very few resources on the position while simualtenously eliminating wear and tear on their backs. It’s no coincidence that these three teams are elite and spend very little capital on the running back position.
In the first round of the 2018 draft, the Giants could have drafted Quenton Nelson: the best interior lineman in football, Bradley Chubb: an elite pass rusher, Denzel Ward: a shutdown corner, or even Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson: two superstar quarterbacks.
3. QB Daniel Jones
Daniel Jones developed into a franchise quarterback in 2022, and there are only seven quarterbacks I would take long term over Jones. Despite those two facts, taking Jones in 2019 was a mistake.
I am a huge believer in Jones and the Giants mistake was strictly from a roster building standpoint. When the Giants took Jones in the 2019 NFL Draft, they were not ready to compete, and did not have a roster that would allow them to compete in the near future.
Four years later, the Giants are finally in position to be true contenders, but they have one big problem: they now have to pay Jones. Vanilla Vick had a cap hit of just over $8 million in 2022, but according to SNY’s Connor Hughes, Danny Dimes’ new contract will likely have an average annual value between $35-37 million.
When your quarterback is on a cheap contract, it gives general managers substantial resources to build a truly elite roster around their young signal-caller. When your quarterback is given a long-term contract, it eats up a significant portion of the salary cap, limiting the talent on the roster. Jones took a big step in ’22, but is he worthy of close to $40 million a season?
2. CB Deandre Baker
The real mistake of the 2018 NFL Draft was Deandre Baker. After selecting Danny Dimes and Dexter Lawrence early in the first round, Gettleman traded back up into the first round and selected Baker, a cornerback out of Georgia.
Baker struggled in his rookie season and was subsequently arrested and accused of armed robbery in the 2019 offseason. Even though the charges were eventually dropped, the Giants released Baker, and his NFL career ended shortly after.
Instead of selecting Baker, the Giants could have selected Deebo Samuel, AJ Brown, DJ Metcalf or Diontae Johnson to fill the massive wide receiver void Gettleman created by trading Odell Beckham Jr. to the Browns. This is without question one of the worst selections in franchise history.
1. WR Kadarius Toney
It is rather unheard of to draft a player who only plays one season with a franchise, and Gettleman somehow managed to do it twice.
The 2021 draft was the biggest mistake the Giants have made in recent history. The Giants were reportedly enamored with DeVonta Smith entering the draft, but somehow let their two rivals, the Cowboys and Eagles, swing a trade, one that allowed the Eagles to draft Smith.
The Giants than sat there at pick No.12, and decided to trade down, bypassing Micah Parsons. Rashawn Slater and Alijah Vera-Tucker. With the 20th pick the Giants selected Toney, a wide reciever who had not been connected to the Giants in the pre-draft process.
The selection always felt odd as Toney was always seen as more of a gadget player, which a first-round pick is quite rich for. Toney also had some serious off the field concerns, and given Gettleman’s recent history with Baker, it was shocking to see the Giants go down that route again.
Toney had a disastrous rookie season that included eight separate injuries, cryptic tweets and an ejection from a game. He was traded shortly before the trade deadline this past fall for a third and sixth-round pick, which feels like great value for the insanely injured wide receiver.
The 2021 NFL Draft produced a loaded class of future All-Pro’s, and looks like it will go down in the history books. Giants fans may want to avoid that book. Toney just won a Super Bowl with the Chiefs, which has only made matters worse for Big Blue nation.
4 LBs the NY Giants should stay away from in free agency
With $44 million in cap space, the Giants must find big improvements at the linebacker position. These four players do not fit this description.