Narratives shape up around every season, and this year, one of the main ones for the New York Giants might not have anything to do with the season at all. Not directly, anyway. This, of course, is the narrative around the NFL Draft this offseason and what player the Giants will take. After the team started 0-5 and lost once again despite scoring more than 30 points, it’s getting easier to see why the Giants are projected to pick number one overall.
And if the team does pick that high, it puts them in an interesting position. The crown jewel of this year’s draft class looks like potential franchise quarterback Trevor Lawrence, but the Giants already have their man. Supposedly. Daniel Jones may or may not have good job security right now, and we likely won’t know which way the decision makers are leaning until close to the Draft. The Giants could decide to stick to Jones and have faith that the current rebuild will yield results.
Or, they could push the reset button and take Lawrence, deciding that Jones was overdrafted out of a desire to quickly find Eli Manning’s replacement. As the results grow worse and Jones struggles on the field, more analysts are leaning towards the latter in their predictions.
Lawrence can spike the ball “when he gets to New York”
Trevor Lawrence’s college head coach, Dabo Swinney, is even aware of the hype about Lawrence heading to one of the New York teams.
Dabo Swinney says Trevor Lawrence apologized after spiking the ball Saturday. "When he gets to New York or wherever y’all think he’s going, he can spike the ball and go do whatever he wants to do. But not here."
— Grace Raynor (@gmraynor) October 13, 2020
Swinney bringing it up shows just how fast this narrative has spread through the league. But it’s easy to see why it formed so quickly. Both of the New York teams are in a terrible state right now, with the Giants being on pace for the first pick and the Jets starting with the same record and releasing running back Le’veon Bell recently.
The odds are getting higher with each week that one New York team or the other will have the first pick. Whether that’s the Jets or Giants, or even whether it happens at all, depends on the rest of the season. But thanks to strength of schedule, the Giants appear to be in the lead right now over other teams who have the same record.