There are multiple reasons why an NFL team fairly consistently finishes a season well below .500 as the New York Giants mostly have since 2017, but first and foremost, it’s because they don’t have enough good players. The NFL Draft is the primary mechanism by which teams build their roster. The Giants’ fall from grace, so to speak, after their 2016 playoff appearance can be traced to some extent to draft successes vs. failures. Let’s try to get a handle on that.
I used Pro Football Reference’s weighted
Approximate Value (wAV) statistics for each Giants draft since 2016 to get an idea of how productive their drafts have been in their last nine drafts spanning three general managers. Like any quantitative metric, wAV has its strengths and weaknesses, but it tries to capture the combination of good play and availability, emphasizing a player’s best years more than his worst. Since it is cumulative, wAV increases with a player’s time in the league. Here are the summed wAVs for each of the Giants’ last nine draft classes:
In general wAV should increase with time since the draft took place, i.e., the 2017 number is the accumulation of nine years of play while that for 2025 is for that season only. Furthermore, it reflects a player’s entire career, not just the time he spent as a Giant. Nonetheless it is some kind of indicator of draft success.
The deviation from the trend line in any year is what tells the story. The Giants’ downfall began in 2017, when the Giants used their first round pick on Evan Engram rather than players such as T.J. Watt and Ryan Ramczyk who were still on the board. Dalvin Tomlinson in Round 3 and Wayne Gallman in Round 4 were productive pros, but the Giants got no elite players from that draft. That is reflected by the class wAV, which is about 40 below the trend lime. 2018 was much better with the pick of Saquon Barkley, even though in retrospect the Giants really should have take Josh Allen – the excess value from that draft roughly cancelled the deficit from 2017.
2019 was arguably the best draft of the Dave Gettleman era despite Daniel Jones only getting the Giants to the playoffs once and the trade-up for Deandre Baker being a disaster. In addition to Jones, who has thrived as a Colt, the Giants got Dexter Lawrence, Julian Love and Darius Slayton from that draft. 2020 was also a little better than average because of the Andrew Thomas and Xavier McKinney picks, but little benefit came from the Giants’ other 8 picks that year. Still, the Giants were building something promising. That’s three consecutive good drafts, which should have put the Giants on the verge of playoff contention.
Then came 2021 and the ill-fated trade-down by Gettleman. It’s not worth re-hashing the details. Suffice to say, though, as pointed out by BBV member Madhops in The Feed, that with Azeez Ojulari and Gary Brightwell being cut this weekend, at the moment there is not a single member of the Giants’ 2021 draft class active in the NFL – only five years after the draft took place. What an indictment of Gettleman’s strategy that year. In fairness, I was as surprised as anyone that the Cowboys would hand DeVonta Smith to a division rival. However, Gettleman’s failure to “settle” for Rashawn Slater or Micah Parsons, even though he got a great haul of picks, can be seen as what has kept the franchise down most of the time since then. (Fun fact: After Gettleman selected Kadarius Toney at No. 20, Najee Harris went at No. 24 and Greg Newsome at No. 26.)
You can see from the figure that the Giants’ 2021 draft class wAV is about 60 points below the trend line that reflects what a “typical” wAV for that draft class should be by now. That’s roughly equivalent to the wAVs of Parsons (67, highest in that class), Penei Sewell (64), and Ja’Marr Chase (58). Basically 2021 wiped out the effect of the excess draft value Gettleman had accumulated in 2019 and 2020 and it showed in the team’s performance. Part of that was Daniel Jones’ neck injury, but the lack of talent elsewhere was revealed when he went down.
Giants fans tend to be critical of the picks of new general manager Joe Schoen in 2022, but you can see from the figure that they account for about 40 points of excess wAV over that expected. Schoen got no blue chip players from that draft, but Kayvon Thibodeaux and Wan’Dale Robinson were both productive players their first four years. Furthermore, the extra picks inherited from Gettleman plus Schoen’s two trade-downs for extra picks (11 total) yielded a few other players who started and played well or at least adequately (Cor’Dale Flott, Dane Belton, Daniel Bellinger; even Evan Neal started for parts of three seasons). The result is that the total wAV from that draft is now about 40 points higher than expected. You can get a better sense of average player quality by plotting wAV per pick per year instead:
Looked at in this way, we can say that 2022 was actually an average draft year. Most of these 11 draftees are now gone, but Robinson and Flott signed lucrative contracts with Tennessee, along with Bellinger, while Belton moved from one MetLife team to the other. Only Thibodeaux and Micah McFadden (a good value in the 5th round even though he’s a backup now) remain Giants, but as a group those 11 players are much better than the 2021 group that Gettleman chose.
2023 was a different story. You can see from both diagrams above that Schoen’s second class is below average, both in total wAV and wAV per pick per year. Jalin Hyatt was brought back on the practice squad, but unless the coaching staff performs a miracle, this draft will hinge on whether Deonte Banks can become the performer his first round status suggested he should become, and whether WYSIWYG now from John Michael Schmitz., i.e., an adequate center but nothing more. JMS has a wAV of 14, which is at or slightly below average for a starter the way PFR calculates things. The rest of the class is now gone from the Giants after only three years, which itself is quite a statement about the quality of that draft.
The 2024 draft class is still TBD, because its second year was a big disappointment compared to its first. You can say that Malik Nabers was a no-brainer at No. 6 after Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye came off the board, but give Schoen credit for not being seduced by the chance to solve the Giants’ quarterback problem with J.J. McCarthy, Michael Penix, or Bo Nix (the last of whom has admittedly had a very good start to his NFL career) and for choosing Nabers over Rome Odunze.
The rest of this draft is a Rorschach test. You can look at Tyler Nubin, Dru Phillips, Theo Johnson, and Tyrone Tracy Jr. and see four promising players who might be big contributors to this year’s Giants. You can also look at them and see a safety who can’t play the run and has not intercepted a pass in two NFL seasons after being a ballhawk in college; a cornerback who is a demon close to the line of scrimmage but is very vulnerable in pass coverage downfield; an athletic tight end who is a threat to take it all the way after catching a pass but who is also a threat to drop the pass; and a running back who has posted 1,000+ yards of offense in each of his first two seasons but who has a disturbing tendency to cough the ball up. Darius Muasau was cut on Sunday but he is a reasonable player for a Round 6 pick who was claimed by the Patriots. By the end of this season we may either consider this Schoen’s first great draft, or another disappointment to go with 2022 and 2023. At the moment, though, it has the highest wAV per pick per year by far because every single one of the six picks played a significant role and/or played well in at least one of the two seasons they have under their belts. That’s unusual for any draft class.
Speaking of Rorschach tests, what do you make of the 2025 class? It’s about as expected for both wAV and wAV per pick per year. For the second time in four years, Schoen had two first round picks. Abdul Carter was the obvious No. 3 choice once Cam Ward and Travis Hunter were off the board. Look at Carter’s rookie season, and do you see the edge defender who was No. 11 in pressures and 21 higher than the second most productive rookie, or do you see the player who only sacked the quarterback 5 (compared to fellow rookie James Pearce Jr.‘s 11) times? It’s amazing how little talk there has been about Carter in camp this summer, but the expectations are high.
And then the ultimate Rorschach test, Jaxson Dart. Some people see a dynamic, creative player who keeps plays alive, pushes the envelope, and makes some remarkable throws off-schedule that require considerable arm talent and vision. Others see a low-accuracy deep ball thrower who hasn’t shown he can thrive under center, hasn’t shown he can read defenses and go through read progressions often enough, and whose recklessness will curtail his career. How will he do in a new offense this season without QB-friendly Brian Daboll and Mike Kafka designing the offense to maximize his skill set?
Beyond Round 1, Cam Skattebo was potentially tremendous value in Round 4, having quickly taken over as RB1 last season. 5th rounder Marcus Mbow had a really nice pre-season and looks as though he can be a reliable backup at both tackle positions. The only disappointment so far is third round pick Darius Alexander, who has shown pass rush ability but has not yet, as of this summer, demonstrated that he can play the run at the NFL level. Overall the wAV per pick per year is nowhere near as high as that for the 2024 class because so many of the 2024 draftees became starters, but it is still as high as that for the 2018 class and above average for the last decade of Giants drafts.
2026
For the third time, Joe Schoen had two top 10 picks this year. They haven’t played a down yet in a regular season NFL game, but if the pre-season was any indication, he may have gotten two gems.
The biggest surprise was that Arvell Reese was still on the board at No. 5. This was textbook “take the best player available” strategy in action. Here’s what Jets X-Factor writer Robby Sabo said in March about the talk of the Jets taking David Bailey at No. 2 (which they eventually did) rather than Reese:
Due to Reese’s absurd all-around ability that can lock down the entire side of his field — EDGE squeeze, 1v1 in the flat, chasedown against receiver screens, rushing the passer, etc. — he’s the clear-cut choice for the Jets.
It’s such a non-competitive matchup that, not only is Reese’s ceiling exponentially higher than Bailey’s, but his floor is as well. How does an argument begin for Bailey to be the safer choice than Reese, when the latter’s do-it-all versatility gives him that many more avenues to make an elite-level impact at the next level?
One draft and two pre-season games later, Sabo’s comments seem right on the mark. Reese only had one pass rush snap in the pre-season, but Pro Football Focus gave him an overall 88.2 defense grade. Reese was everywhere on the field and especially elite in run defense (something the Giants may really need depending on how the interior defensive line shakes out). If you think back to the Giants’ great linebacking corps of the 1980s, they were versatile athletes who played all phases of the game. It will be fun to see if Reese can revive memories of those great players.
Up and down that draft, we see players who look to have great potential. Sisi Mauigoa had a fine summer and appears to have handled the switch to guard well. Malachi Fields appeared ready to contribute on game day as a key receiver. Of most interest, two of the Giants’ three Round 6 picks, tackle J.C. Davis and linebacker Jack Kelly, looked as if they were ready to contribute right away, though Davis may not see playing time early on given the Giants’ strength at tackle.
So are the Giants getting better at drafting? The figure above shows an upward trend but the scatter is much too large, and the sample size for the recent drafts too small, to draw conclusions yet. Take away 2024 and 2021 and the trend line is probably flat. What we can see though is that 2024, 2025, and 2026 all show a chance of being successful draft classes, perhaps enough to eventually offset the mistakes of 2021 and 2023 that have put the Giants in such a deep hole to date. We don’t know how much John Harbaugh influenced the drafts in Baltimore, where the front office is considered one of the NFL’s best. We do see every sign that he is calling the shots here at 1925 Giants Drive. If that’s why Arvell Reese is a Giant, that may bode well for the future.
