We’ve all heard plenty of names by now tied to the New York Giants as potential draft prospects for one position: quarterback. Dwayne Haskins Jr., Daniel Jones, Kyler Murray. All of these names are players that will soon be in the NFL and all of them have one thing in common other than being mocked to the Giants in plenty of mock drafts: they’re all entering the draft this year.
The Giants hold the sixth overall pick and whether or not they should spend it on a quarterback or not is one of the more hotly debated subjects of the offseason. On one hand, there are arguments that Eli Manning can hold on for a couple of more years as the starter and that the team should be patient. On the other hand, one could make a case that the Giants should think about the future now and draft Manning’s successor as soon as possible.
Tua Tagovailoa, Jake Fromm, and Justin Herbert are all viable quarterback options that can be drafted next year. However, there’s one thing that many are forgetting. The Giants might not be in a position to draft the player that they want next year. Before the season, few even predicted that the Giants would have the sixth overall pick in this year’s draft. Assuming that they’ll be in a position to get one of the top quarterbacks is also assuming that the team is going to have another very poor season.
Perhaps not a totally unfair assumption to make after how this season went, but at least on paper, the Giants should improve this offseason. The front office and the coaching staff would have to be doing something seriously wrong for them to not get better and avoid picking in the top ten again. Regardless of what happened last season, the team still has talent, and their 1-7 start likely won’t be repeated.
It’s not that the Giants are going to be one of the best teams in the league next year, and they might not even make the playoffs. At least, that’s how things look right now. But they should at least perform at an average level, and average isn’t bad enough to get a shot at a top draft prospect without making a trade for a higher draft pick. A chance to make a trade like that isn’t always a given, either.
The quarterbacks in next year’s class aren’t magically better, and if the Giants want to hold out for one of them, they could miss a chance to take a highly rated quarterback altogether. Is there a guarantee that any of the players in this year’s draft will pan out? No, there never is. But the Giants have something this year that they might not have in 2020: a chance.