Brace yourselves, draft season is coming.
Not right away, mind you, but it’s definitely coming.
I get it: a significant portion of the New York Giants’ fanbase doesn’t want to hear about the draft — Ed sure doesn’t, and I can practically hear him rolling his eyes as I type this.
But this isn’t a piece about the Giants strengths or weaknesses, or how they could be one great draft away from dominance. Rather, this is to set the stage for what should be a great, and exciting, college season as well as a way to look
at the next era of Giants’ football.
It will be fascinating to see how the Giants’ own needs evolve over the course of the year, and how much time Joe Schoen spends on the road. We’ve gotten used to seeing him scouting quarterbacks during the season, but how will he structure his trips and what positions will he concentrate on?
The process leading up to the 2027 NFL Draft won’t get started in earnest for us on the outside until January, but draft season never truly ends for the 32 NFL teams. The BLESTO and NFS scouting services have spent the spring turning over stone to get preliminary reports and spring grades on draft-eligible prospects around the country.
That’s true every single year, but the 2027 draft is already shaping up to be one of the most hotly anticipated classes in recent — and not-so-recent — memory.
The excitement for the upcoming draft is being driven by the anticipated quarterback class, the gravity of which is already distorting the NFL landscape and how teams are conducting their business. For teams like the Giants, who believe themselves to be set at quarterback, teams are looking at top prospects who could be pushed down.
Quarterback-needy teams like the New York Jets, Cleveland Browns, Arizona Cardinals, and Pittsburgh Steelers, however, crafted their 2026 draft strategies around the upcoming draft. Even the Philadelphia Eagles, who are seemingly set on trading star wide receiver AJ Brown, may have to settle for a 2028 1st round pick instead of even a 2027 second round pick because teams don’t want to surrender the opportunity to pick from the upcoming talent pool.
The excitement for the upcoming draft will be driven by the quarterback class, which could yield as many as 8 or 10 passers with first or fringe-first round grades, but it has the potential to have great classes at several other positions.
And as it so happens, some of those positions could overlap with the Giants’ potential needs.
Ohio State wide receiver Jeremiah Smith is already generating the kind of excitement we haven’t seen since Myles Garrett and is being compared to the likes of Julio Jones and Calvin Johnson. But even beyond Smith, the class features talents like Ryan Coleman-Williams (Alabama) and Cam Coleman (Texas).
Where there were questions as to whether last year’s defensive tackle class had any first-round prospects, the upcoming class could have players like A’Mauri Washington (Oregon), David Stone (Oklahoma), Ahmad Moten (Miami), or A.J. Holmes earning first round grades.
And finally the secondary appears deep and talented. The cornerback class features prospects like Leonard Moore (Notre Dame), Brice Pollock (Texas Tech) or Kelley Jones (Mississippi State). The safety class, meanwhile features players like Tae Johnson (Notre Dame), K.J. Bolden (Georgia), and Jelani McDonald (Texas).
There’s plenty of time over the Dog Days of Summer between mini-camp and training camp to take looks at the top prospects. For now, we just need to understand the magnitude of what might be coming.
