This is the time of year for New York Giants fans to be giddy. Since the team has usually drafted in the top ten since its last Super Bowl appearance (9 times in the past 12 years), the Giants usually get a big-name first round pick that has everyone excited. Sometimes they get two: In 2022 (by trading down in 2021), 2025 (by trading back up into the first round), and now in 2026 by trading Dexter Lawrence. Once they had three (in 2019, when they traded Odell Beckham Jr. and then traded back up into the first round).
They’ve also had years with more than two picks in Rounds 2 and 3 (2018 and 2022).
By now, they should be a great team. Yet only twice in that time have they even made the playoffs, and only once have they won a playoff game. Somehow the excitement of draft weekend hasn’t carried over to the actual games. A reminder of all those Day 1 and 2 picks:
2015: Ereck Flowers, Landon Collins, Owa Odighizuwa
2016: Eli Apple, Sterling Shepard, Darian Thompson
2017: Evan Engram, Dalvin Tomlinson, Davis Webb
2018: Saquon Barkley, Will Hernandez, Lorenzo Carter, B.J. Hill
2019: Daniel Jones, Dexter Lawrence, Deandre Baker, Oshane Ximines
2020: Andrew Thomas, Xavier McKinney, Matt Peart
2021: Kadarius Toney, Azeez Ojulari, Aaron Robinson
2022: Kayvon Thibodeaux, Evan Neal, Wan’Dale Robinson, Joshua Ezeudu, Cor’Dale Flott
2023: Deonte Banks, John Michael Schmitz, Jalin Hyatt
2024: Malik Nabers, Tyler Nubin, Andru Phillips
2025: Abdul Carter, Jaxson Dart, Darius Alexander
That’s 37 Day 1 and 2 picks. I have subjectively highlighted draftees in boldface that I think have been at least productive or even good NFL players, even if not great ones. There are 20 of those in 11 seasons – that’s a 54% “hit” rate.
Feel free to quibble with me on some of them. Giants fans loved to hate Evan Engram, but he’s been a starter on three different teams over nine seasons and has never been targeted fewer than 64 times a season. Likewise Will Hernandez, who never quite made the grade as a Giant but has started for eight NFL seasons when he wasn’t injured. Same for Lorenzo Carter, who has mostly started for Atlanta since leaving the Giants. And of course Daniel Jones…but he’s won a playoff game, was on track to take the Colts to the playoffs last year before his injury, and is now on his second $40M AAV contract.
The more recent draftees are harder to evaluate given the smaller sample size. I think we can all agree that Evan Neal, Joshua Ezeudu, Deonte Banks, and Jalin Hyatt haven’t been worth their draft slots…yet for the moment at least they remain Giants in the John Harbaugh era. I gave thumbs-up to JMS and Dru Phillips and thumbs down to Tyler Nubin, all of whom have started since becoming Giants without solidifying their place as long-term starters, but time will tell. Darius Alexander’s body of work is still too small to evaluate though he began to show promise as a rookie.
The point is that when people say that the draft is a crapshoot…it really is. A 54% hit rate means that you could flip a coin four times and evaluate as well as any draft expert which of Arvell Reese, Sisi Mauigoa, Colton Hood, and Malachi Fields are going to become good NFL players over the long haul.
And if we’re talking great players, it’s even harder. Of my list above, I’d only put Saquon Barkley, Dexter Lawrence, Andrew Thomas, maybe Xavier McKinney, and Malik Nabers in that category, and we’ll hope that Jaxson Dart and Abdul Carter join that club. That’s a maximum of seven in 11 drafts on Days 1 and 2, fewer than one per year.
Maybe that’s a result of poor drafting, or poor coaching, or both, but some of it is just the difficulty of figuring out how particular players’ skills will translate to the NFL. There’s also the fact that some players adjust to the NFL more quickly than others. So what can we expect of this year’s Day 1 and 2 Giants picks in their rookie seasons given past NFL history?
Arvell Reese
Reese is at once the Giants’ most exciting draft pick and the one that’s most difficult to project. Few if any people expected him to be on the board when the Giants picked. Harbaugh himself said that in the “zillions” of mocks the Giants did, he was never there at No. 5. ESPN’s 2026 mock draft simulator isn’t quite that extreme, but the statistics of their own prediction model gave him a 4.5% chance of going to the Giants:
It’s easy to get excited when that happens. Whether Reese’s rookie season matches the hype is a different question. Many NFL edge defenders began their college careers as off-ball linebackers full-time or part-time and moved up front full-time as their careers developed. Here are a few, compared to Reese:
Micah Parsons only rarely lined up on the edge at Penn State and only rushed the passer a few times a game in his first season. That increased somewhat in his second season. When he came to Dallas, he was originally used a lot as an off-ball linebacker, rushing the passer 13 or fewer times in 6 of his first 9 games. The Cowboys finally got the message that he was a lethal pass rusher and only an adequate pass defender and finally made him primarily an edge defender.
Jalon Walker, the No. 15 pick by Atlanta in 2025, followed a different progression at Georgia. He played mostly on the edge his first two years at Georgia, then split time off-ball and on the edge his final year. The Falcons used him almost exclusively on the edge as a rookie. Abdul Carter’s history started out more like Parsons’, but he stayed in school an extra year and made the switch mostly to edge, which is how the Giants used him as a rookie.
The big difference between Arvell Reese and these other players is how young and inexperienced he is, having played only 960 college snaps (as opposed to 1,225 for Parsons and 1,836 for Carter). Walker’s 984 college snaps are more comparable. Walker had a good rookie season but not an outstanding one, with 5.5 sacks but only 29 total pressures. Carter finished with four sacks but 66 total pressures. Only Parsons (13.0 sacks) really made his mark as a pass rusher as a rookie.
We know that the Giants are going to line Reese up all over. We don’t know how the positional snaps are going to be divided up and how often Dennard Wilson is going to have Reese rush the passer, a skill that he is still developing (although he did have 6.5 sacks this past season). Don’t be surprised if David Bailey, taken No. 2 by the Jets, makes a bigger splash as a rookie. Bailey was basically edge-only during his four-year college career and exploded with 14.5 sacks last season. Furthermore, the Giants have depth at edge defender (for now, anyway) and not as much at linebacker. Reese’s impact may be seen more in his run defense and coverage (the latter another skill he’ll need to develop) than in his pass rush this coming season. He’s very young (20). Give him time.
Francis Mauigoa
There was a decent chance that Mauigoa would drop to the Giants at No. 10, but the ESPN predictor had his highest odds of coming off the board at Nos. 6, 7, 8, and 9, with the Giants estimated at a 10% chance to be the pick at No. 10. Instead Spencer Fano was the first OL off the board at No. 9.
The big uncertainty about Mauigoa is that he will be making the switch from right tackle to right guard as he enters the NFL. At Miami Mauigoa almost exclusively played right tackle, but he did get 10 snaps at right guard in his final season.
Moving from tackle to guard is not considered as big an adjustment as is moving from one side of the offensive line to the other, but it does take getting used to. A recent example is Sam Cosmi of the Commanders, who played at right tackle his first two seasons and then moved to right guard for his most recent three. On the surface, the adjustment looks to have been pretty seamless for Cosmi:
A few details suggest some differences, both pro and con. Cosmi gave up four and five sacks his two seasons at right tackle but has surrendered only four in his three seasons at right guard. Instead, though, he has given up more hits and hurries at guard per snap, so the total pressures per snap haven’t been much different (21 in 585 snaps, or 3.6%, in 2022 vs. 31 in 1259 snaps, or 2.8%, in 2023) but they have been less disastrous at guard than at tackle, which one might expect.
Unlike Cosmi, who was moved from tackle to guard because he was having some problems with the pass rush, Mauigoa is being asked to move to guard only because the Giants have a need there that they don’t have at tackle. Undoubtedly it will take some getting used to, working in closer quarters with more instantaneous contact, but on the plus side, he will be dealing in general with players with less speed there. With an entire training camp to adjust, though, it should not be a problem. In fact Dane Brugler of The Athletic in The Beast says that Mauigoa requested guard reps in practice to gain some experience inside, and that “though his college tape says he can stay outside at right tackle, his skill set would be maximized inside at guard in the NFL.”
At this point there is no reason not to expect Mauigoa to make the transition successfully and to be a plus in the starting lineup early in his Giants career…except for one thing. He’s a rookie. Here are the cumulative college and NFL rookie year pass blocking stats for every offensive tackle taken in the top 10 in the past six years:
Mauigoa’s situation differs from the rest since he will immediately be moving to guard, but we can see a few things:
- Mauigoa is not the cleanest offensive line prospect to come out of college in recent years. His totals are inflated because he had more college snaps than anyone else on the list, but per snap, you can see for example that he gave up more sacks than No. 9 pick Fano and many more than Penei Sewell and Joe Alt, perhaps the best offensive line prospects to come out of college in recent years.
- For almost all rookie offensive linemen, there’s a period of adjustment when they reach the NFL. Giants fans will remember rookie Andrew Thomas’s poor rookie play. Even Sewell took his lumps as a rookie, giving up five sacks and taking 11 penalties.
- You can only tell so much from college play. Evan Neal’s college stats were generally better than those of classmates Ikem Ekwonu and Charles Cross, and his rookie perfomance was not very different from theirs. It didn’t work out the same way in the pros, where every weakness is exploited. Brugler sees one of Mauigoa’s weaknesses as “ends up on the ground too much, especially when dropping eye level and lunging” which will revive nightmares of the Neal experience. On the other hand he sees Mauigoa’s foot speed as good for a guard.
The bottom line: Don’t expect Mauigoa to dominate right away, and consider it a pleasant surprise if he does, but in the long term, it’s reasonable to hope that he’ll become a solid, or maybe elite, addition to the Giants’ offensive line.
Colton Hood
Let’s assume for the moment that Paulson Adebo is CB1 for the Giants, despite having had a nondescript first season in blue. CB2, however, is wide open. The Giants did sign Greg Newsome II, and Deonte Banks, like Newsome a late Round 1 draft pick, returns. Both players have had puzzling career paths. Newsome developed into a shutdown corner at Northwestern, giving up only 93 yards with 7 pass breakups and a 31.7 passer rating his final season. He carried that into the pros, with a sub-100 passer rating his first three seasons along with 6, 8, and 11 pass breakups and again a sub-100 passer rating.
Then the wheels for some reason came off. Newsome has had some injuries, but nothing that kept him out of the lineup a significant amount of time. Whatever the reason, the past two years have not been good, and after acquiring him from the Browns, the Jaguars let him walk. In the 2026 draft, the Giants added a high Round 2 pick who was seen as a late Round 1 value in Colton Hood. Can one of these players grab hold of the CB2 job?
Hood is another young guy (21) on an overall very young Giants team. Technically he has three seasons of college experience, but he hardly played his first year (44 snaps at Auburn). He spent a year at Colorado with Travis Hunter in the secondary, playing about half the time, and then he spent a year at Tennessee planning to be CB2 paired with Jermod McCoy until the latter’s injury forced Hood into the CB1 role. Hood was a sure tackler at Tennessee (6.6% missed tackle rate), surrendered only one TD with a 53.8% completion rate, had 5 pass breakups, and allowed only a 70.8 passer rating, playing almost exclusively on the boundary. There is every reason to think he could win the CB2 starting job as a rookie, and perhaps eventually become CB1. How often has that happened to low first/early second round picks, and how good were they?
Below is a list of all cornerbacks drafted in the last 5 picks of Round 1 or the first five picks of Round 2 in the last five drafts. All of them are boundary rather than slot corners, as we expect Hood also to be:
All of these players have become regular players on their team’s defense and either part-time or full-time starters. None of them have made a Pro Bowl or been elected All-Pro. Late first/early second round has been a bit of desert for cornerbacks in recent years. Since cornerback is a premium position in today’s NFL, the really good ones often go in the top 10, as we saw this year with Mansoor Delane and several years ago with Sauce Gardner and Derek Stingley Jr. When that doesn’t happen, there is often a run on cornerbacks in the middle of the round, as we saw in 2023 when a deep cornerback group left only Deonte Banks for the Giants to choose when their turn came up. On the other hand, deeper into Round 2, teams begin to focus on slot corners. The players above are all boundary corners.
That said, Nate Wiggins is seen as having great potential, and Joey Porter Jr., who had a rough first two seasons, blossomed in year 3, while Roger McCreary is at least a solid cornerback though not elite. In general this group of corners has had slightly worse but still reasonably good completion percentages against as pros compared to their college stats, and a few of them have had solid passer ratings against. (No regularly playing Giant except now-departed Cor’Dale Flott allowed a passer rating below 75 last season.) That sets a reasonable bar to hope Colton Hood will clear in his rookie season – become a regular part of the cornerback rotation, defend some passes, make the occasional interception, and prevent some first downs. Don’t expect Sauce Gardner or Devon Witherspoon or Quinyon Mitchell and you may not be disappointed.
Malachi Fields
Malachi Fields was the 10th wide receiver taken in the 2026 NFL Draft, and the second to come off the board in Round 3 after Antonio Williams (a 5-foot-11 wide receiver that the Giants probably wouldn’t have taken even if he was there). He was part of a mini-run on receivers in that round. No wide receivers had been taken at that point since Germie Bernard went at No. 47 in Round 2.
An interesting thing about this part of this draft is the number of big WRs (6-2 or taller) that came off the board in the top half of Round 3, and how that compares to previous years. Here are just the big wide receivers:
We’re dealing in small numbers, so it’s dangerous to say that there’s a trend, but five bigs came off the board high in Round 3 this year, vs. three in 2025, vs. only four in the previous four drafts combined. Indulging myself to interpret this as more than just chance, I might guess that either the desire among teams for explosive wide receivers has caused teams to grab them at the top of the draft, leaving the poor big guys increasingly to languish until Day 2, or else there’s a little resurgence going on that is convincing GMs not to leave Day 2 without grabbing their own possible future Mike Evans.
Fields’ college career does not stand out among this five year group of Round 3 big WRs. He did have the most targets and yards, but he played in college for five years. The other four bigs on the list all came off the board within 10 picks after Fields was taken. We don’t know whether Fields was THE guy the Giants had to have, and they wanted to beat the rush, or whether Cleveland was the only willing trading partner at a price they were willing to pay. To some extent he had to be their highest-ranked big wide receiver at the moment, since the others were still on the board. If Cleveland hadn’t been willing, but Tampa Bay at No. 84 had been, would they have made the trade and taken Ted Hurst? Either way, it will be interesting to see how Fields’ career plays out compared to the other four.
The other thing to say about this entire five year group is that for the most part, the ones who have already played in the NFL haven’t particularly distinguished themselves. The big exception is Nico Collins from the 2021 draft. Looking on the right side of the chart, Collins had a reasonably productive rookie season but not anything to get you excited. His sophomore season was pretty similar. Then Houston drafted C.J. Stroud, and Collins has been an elite WR ever since, with three consecutive 1,000 yard seasons and 21 TDs after only three in his first two seasons combined.
Michael Wilson, drafted two years later, had a similarly modest but acceptable rookie season, but by year 3 he had broken the 1,000 yard mark as well with 7 TDs. What changed? Kyler Murray was lost for the season after being injured in Game 5. He was replaced by Jacoby Brissett. Wilson only had 52 receiving yards for the season when Murray went down. With Brissett, he broke 100 yards three times and had two others with 99 and 89 yards.
On the other hand, classmate Cedric Tillman, Jalin Hyatt’s route-running teammate at Tennessee, has had almost as unproductive a career as Hyatt’s, never exceeding 339 yards in any season. In Tillman’s case you can argue that a chaotic quarterback situation in Cleveland has done him no favors. To some extent the same has been true for Hyatt (another third-round receiver but not a big one), but he’s shown little to make anyone think the QB is the problem. Hyatt was no better with Jaxson Dart and Jamis Winston throwing to him than he had been in his previous two seasons.
What all this means for Fields as a rookie is anyone’s guess, but the potential is there for Fields to put up numbers comparable to what Collins and Wilson did as rookies. Anything more than that is doubtful, given the number of WR mouths that Dart is going to need to feed back there and the likely heavy emphasis on the run game under John Harbaugh.
