The disappointment of (at least some) New York Giants fans at losing what many would consider their best defensive player of the last few years from an already poor defense is assuaged by the fact that the Giants now have two top 10 draft picks, Nos. 5 and 10, in what is considered a relatively weak 2026 NFL Draft overall. The question now is what they will do with those two picks. Of equal interest is: How often has having two top 10 picks worked out for teams in the past?
It’s possible that the
Giants will trade down to later in the first round with one of the picks, probably No. 10, to pick later in the round and add at least another Day 2 pick. My guess is that the Giants would gladly do that, but in a draft with few highly ranked quarterbacks, that is less likely than in some other years. Let’s instead just consider what’s happened in the past when teams just stayed in the top 10 and made both picks.
Rich Cimini of ESPN, who covers the New York Jets, looked at that a few years ago, when the Jets had two top 10 picks. Here is his complete list up to that point of teams that picked twice in the top 10 going back to 1967:
Some notable things about this list:
- For decades it was very common for a team to have two top 10 picks, but then after 2000, it just stopped for almost two decades until 2018.
- Fans think that their general managers are supposed to ‘hit” on Round 1 picks, but in reality only about half of them even get a second contract from the team that drafted them. You’d imagine that the top 10 would be better, but only four Hall of Famers came out out of the 17 cases above of teams having two top 10 picks. The jury is still out on Baker Mayfield and Denzel Ward from the 2018 class, but Mayfield has settled into good-but-not-great territory, while Ward, though having made the Pro Bowl the last three years and five times overall, is probably not HOF-caliber. Per Cimini 10 of the 17 instances yielded a player who made multiple Pro Bowls.
- That said, you often get good players in the top 10 who are not great or succumb to injuries. Jamal Lewis and Travis Taylor from the 2000 Ravens is an example of good but not great. The other example from 2000 was Washington. They took LaVar Arrington, who looked like a potential HOFer but had his career ended prematurely by injuries, and Chris Samuel, a multiple-time Pro Bowler who wasn’t quite HOF-caliber.
- Another example is 1997, in which the Seahawks did get a HOF tackle in Walter Jones plus a solid defensive back, Shawn Springs, who had a long career and made one Pro Bowl.
- More often, one of the two players works out, the other doesn’t, e.g., 1994, when the Colts took HOFer Marshall Faulk but also LB Trev Alberts, who only played three seasons and never did much.
- Sometimes neither really works out. In 1992 the Colts also had two top 10 picks. DL Steve Emtman had an injury-shortened and undistinguished career, while LB Quentin Coryatt was more solid but also had his career shortened by injuries.
That article was written in 2022. It turns out that having two top 10 picks has become a thing again in the NFL the past few years. Cimini wrote that story because the Jets had two top 10 picks in that draft after they fleeced Seattle in the Jamal Adams trade. They took Sauce Gardner at No. 4 and Garrett Wilson at No. 10. Although Sauce was traded last year, you have to say that the Jets absolutely hit on both picks.
Of course the Giants also had two top 10 picks in 2022, Joe Schoen’s first draft as Giants GM:
Based on Pro Football Reference’s Weighted Approximate Value (wAV) metric, you could argue that Schoen made both of the two worst selections in the 2022 Draft, Kayvon Thibodeaux and Evan Neal. No one will argue about Neal, who has been a disaster in the NFL. Assessing Thibodeaux that way is overly harsh, though. Thibodeaux suffers in comparison to Aidan Hutchinson, but his career has been pretty similar to that of No. 1 pick Travon Walker at the same position, and as good as or better than that of Ikem Ekwonu. Thibodeaux made game-winning or -saving plays against the Ravens and Commanders as a rookie, and Shane Bowen’s defense did him no favors the past two years, the latter of which was limited by injury. Even Wink Martindale’s defense had Thibodeaux dropping into coverage more often than you’d like to see your edge defender doing. Still, that 2022 draft was notable in the number of truly excellent players that came out of that top 10, none of them a Giant.
In 2023, once again there was a team with two top 10 picks, this time Houston. The Texans had the No. 2 pick and then traded up to get the No. 3 pick as well. They used No. 2 on quarterback C.J. Stroud, who looked great as a rookie but has come back to Earth a bit in the past two years. With No. 3 the Texans took Will Anderson, who has played great ever since he first stepped onto an NFL field.
Then it 2024 it happened again. The Chicago Bears fortuitously had the No. 1 pick by virtue of their previous year’s trade with Carolina, because the Panthers had an awful 2023. They used No. 1 on quarterback Caleb Williams, who had a rough rookie season but really came into his own in Year 2 under the guidance of new head coach Ben Johnson. They used the No. 9 pick on wide receiver Rome Odunze, the last of the big three wide receivers left on the board after Marvin Harrison Jr. and Malik Nabers were chosen. Odunze also improved from his rookie season in the Ben Johnson offense. He’s not (yet) considered elite, but he might still get there.
Now the Giants are the team with two top 10 picks. It’s anyone’s guess what they’ll do with them. Unlike many previous drafts, there are few players who seem to be a lock to be stars in the NFL, and fewer still at some of the traditional “high value” positions. The Giants are now in dire need of a defensive tackle (or two), but there are no Jalen Carters (No. 9 in 2023) in this draft. They could really use a right guard, but there are no Quenton Nelsons (No. 6 in 2018) in this draft.
On the other hand, the Giants could really use another linebacker, another safety, another cornerback, another wide receiver, and there are possibilities of great players at each of those positions in this draft. There are possibilities of really good guards and defrensive tackles too, but even No. 10 seems too rich to take one of them.
For what it’s worth, during John Harbaugh’s tenure as Baltimore’s head coach, the Ravens (who only had a top 10 pick once in the entire time he was there) used a first round pick in the following way:
QB – 2, RB – 0, WR – 4, TE- 1, OT – 2, IOL – 1
Edge – 1, DT – 0, LB – 2, DB – 6
The big difference is that Harbaugh worked collaboratively with GMs Ozzie Newsome and Eric DeCosta, but the GM had the final say. Now Harbaugh is also seemingly working collaboratively with Joe Schoen, but the final calls on player selection will surely be Harbaugh’s. If the Ravens’ history is any guide, and assuming the Giants aren’t in the market for a QB or an OT, we might anticipate No. 5 and No. 10 being used on two players from among safety, cornerback, wide receiver, and linebacker if the Giants do not trade down.
The odds are against both picks becoming great NFL players, but history says that we can hope that at least one of them will be very good and the other at least useful. That may or may not make up for the loss of Dexter Lawrence, but it’s something to build on.
