Hindsight is 20/20, or at least that’s how the saying goes.
The New York Giants 2025 season has been full of “woulda, shoulda, coulda” moments. But as disappointing as the season has been for the Giants, was the 2025 NFL Draft the moment that would have benefitted the most from the advantage of hindsight?
Draft analyst Todd McShay re-drafted the first half of the 2025 NFL Draft as a Christmas Special for his podcast, The McShay Show. While a couple of the first 16 picks were repeated, most of them
changed, some dramatically. Did the Giants’ draft improve on a second pass, or did Joe Schoen’s navigation of the first round set the Giants up for tragedy on the re-draft?
2025 Re-draft
- Tennessee Titans – Tyler Shough (QB, Louisville)
- Jacksonville Jaguars – Abdul Carter (EDGE, Penn State)
- New York Giants – Jalon Walker (EDGE, Georgia)
- New England Patriots – Kelvin Banks Jr. (OT, Texas)
- Cleveland Browns – Will Campbell (OT, LSU)
- Las Vegas Raiders – Cam Ward (QB, Miami)
- New York Jets – Jaxson Dart (QB, Ole Miss)
- Carolina Panthers – Tetairoa McMillan (WR, Arizona)
- New Orleans Saints – James Pearce Jr. (EDGE, Tennessee)
- Chicago Bears – Mason Graham (iDL, Michigan)
- San Francisco 49ers – Emeka Egbuka (WR, Ohio State)
- Dallas Cowboys – Carson Schwesinger (LB, UCLA)
- Miami Dolphins – Walter Nolan (iDL, Ole Miss)
- Indianapolis Colts – Tyler Warren (TE, Penn State)
- Atlanta Falcons – Colston Loveland (TE, Michigan)
- Arizona Cardinals – Armand Membou (OT, Missouri)
The highlights of McShay’s redraft — Tyler Shough going first overall or Travis Hunter falling out of the top half of the draft — overshadow the fact that this is something of a worst-case scenario for the Giants.
Jalon Walker is a fine player who will probably be an impact defender for a long while in the NFL. However, we’ve finally starting to see the potential Abdul Carter showed on a weekly basis at Penn State, and it’s clear that the Giants would be a worse team without him.
The bigger disaster is that the Giants wouldn’t have their quarterback, and it’s entirely likely that they wouldn’t be able to get their quarterback in 2026. As things stand now, the only top quarterback prospect considered highly likely declare for the draft is Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza.
Alabama’s Ty Simpson and Oregon’s Dante Moore could both declare, however both are one-year starters and could be better served by returning to school for more experience at the Collegiate level. Quarterback prospects who come out with just one year of starting experience typically struggle in the NFL, particularly early in their career.
The Giants are vying for the first overall pick this year, and their record has little to do with the quarterback position. So it’s unlikely that the team would have a worse record without Dart on the field — though they would likely have fewer “shoulda been” near-win games.
That could put the Giants in the unenviable position of either having to wait yet another year to actually start building their team, or fork over a haul of picks for a player who would likely be a worse prospect than Dart.
The feeling here is that seeing how much the Giants potentially suffer in the re-draft serves to show that the Giants are set up for the future. They have a potential game-wrecking star on the defensive side of the ball, as well as a potential franchise quarterback. The future is significantly brighter with Dart — a quarterback who already processes well, avoids turnovers, is one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL at avoiding sacks, and galvanizes his team.
Speaking for myself, I believe pretty strongly that the Giants are a talented team that has been poorly coached and is therefore playing poorly. The fact that the Giants seem to have gotten a pair of first round steals at two of the most important positions on the field bodes well for a quick turnaround once the coaching matches the talent.
Watch the whole re-draft here:
