Grading the NY Giants rivals performance in the 2023 NFL Draft
By Zak Musso
The NFL draft is in the books, which means it's time to give out draft grades. We already gave Joe Schoen's team their grade, but now it is time to do the same for the G-Men's NFC East rivals.
The good news coming out of draft weekend for the NY Giants is they had a tremendous draft, and filled their three main holes: wide receiver, center and cornerback. The bad news for New York is their rivals also had good drafts, especially the rival located just south of New York. Here are my draft grades for the Washington Commanders, Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys:
Washington Commanders Grade: B-
Of all the NFC East teams, The Commanders have had the worst offseason. That theme continued in the draft. In the first round, the Commanders took Emmanuel Forbes, a cornerback out of Mississippi State, with the 16th pick.
That felt like a massive reach. The Commanders shied away from the consensus draft board, and drafted Forbes over Christian Gonzalez and Deonte Banks. Nothing against Forbes, but he is just not the second-best cornerback in the class.
Forbes weighs just 166 pounds, which is extremely lean for an NFL player. Gonzalez, a consensus top 10 prospect, was selected just one pick after Washington by the Patriots and secondary guru Bill Belichick.
The Commanders are absoultely not a good enough organization to make a reach like that. In the second round the Commanders selected Illinois safety Jartavius Martin. Mel Kiper Jr. ranked Martin 72nd on his big board. The Commanders took at him with pick 47.
The Commanders added center Ricky Stromberg in round three and guard Braeden Daniels in round four. Those were both strong picks, and those players could compete for playing time immediately on the mediocre Commander offensive line.
Washington rounded out its draft class with DE KJ Henry, RB Chris Rodriguez Jr., and OLB Andre Jones. All in all, they reached in both of the first two rounds. The Commanders needed to add serious talent last weekend to catch the three teams that finished ahead of them in the division last year and failed to do so.