The New York Giants elected to hire general manager Dave Gettleman one year ago after the reign of Jerry Reese came to an end.
Two Super Bowl’s later and a flurry of terrible drafts, the Giants decided it was time to move on towards bigger and better things. However, most were concerned about Gettleman and his past relationships with players. He is all business and no sympathy, but he has done a fantastic job piecing together a Giants team that has been lost for a decade.
Second drafts a charm for the New York Giants:
Drafting running back Saquon Barkley might have been the easiest decision in Dave’s career, and we shouldn’t give him the credit for selecting a player that was guaranteed to be a perennial Pro Bowler. Where Gettleman success comes into play is in the later rounds of the draft. Between rounds, 3-7 is where the new general manager has really shined.
Last season, the Giants drafted Lorenzo Carter and BJ Hill in the third round. Both will be starters in 2019. In the fifth round, they selected RJ McIntosh who will be a rotational player after dealing with a thyroid issue in 2018 that kept him out the entire season.
In the most recent draft, Gettleman selected DE Oshane Ximines in the third round, CB Julian Love in the fourth round, LB Ryan Connelly/WR Darius Slayton in the fifth round, and CB Corey Ballentine in the sixth round. In the seventh round, he selected OT George Asiago-Adjei, and DL Chris Slayton, defense of lineman from Syracuse.
Out of his seven picks between rounds 3-7, he has five potential starting players. The two outliers being the seventh-round picks who haven’t shown much this off-season so far. However, Love is competing for the slot corner position and Ximines will be a featured player on the defensive front.
Ryan Connelly has already been earning first-team reps over veteran BJ Goodson and Darius Slayton has been slotted in with the first team on numerous occasions. Corey Ballentine, division II cornerback, has looked fantastic at times, even recording an interception and two assisted tackles in the victory over the Jets in the first preseason game.
All in all, the Giants could have seven new starters by the end of the 2019 season who have less than two years of experience. Those are only players from rounds 3-7, which shows the quality of depth Dave Gettleman is building and how well he is drafting.
One other essential point I would like to make is that Dave does not hold on to his own pride. When it comes to free-agent signing’s, he has no problem releasing a player that simply isn’t panning out, which is something Jerry Reese failed to do over the years. Take Patrick Omameh for example, who signed a three-year, $15 million deal and was cut by week five last season.
The no-nonsense approach Gettleman and the Giants have adopted needed to be prioritized after Reese was fired. There were too many distractions and far too many wasted draft picks to anticipate success for the future. Gettleman has done a fantastic job piecing the team together thus far and we are already seeing the benefits of his decisions.