have the Giants really drafted that poorly?

You are definitely correct when you say that a top 10 pick is different from a 20-30 pick. And the Giants have been successful enough to usually be in the bottom half of the draft almost every year. And after the second round it is a crapshoot.

The problem the Giants have in my opinion is that they have so much cap space dedicated to Eli. This limits the amount of money the Giants have to fill holes in the roster . . . leading to a lack of team depth. We see this with the Redskins continually.

Also the Giants seem to rarely get contributions from drafted players early in their careers. Part of that is probably TC's inclination to go with experience. But I think it has hurt the team. If starters go down...no one seems to be ready to take their place.

drafting in a vacuum, simply looking at players they drafted and their results.

If you're looking to rate/rank the drafts for this team it needs to be done comparatively with other teams and then if you're looking for a statement about their drafting prowess over time that same analysis should be done over that time period (against the success of other teams).

without doing any analysis it definitely seems the Giants have not drafted well.

after the third round are overrated. They mostly fail. JPP and was is accurate. David Wilson has to shine or he is a bust. Trading mid round picks for established players like Beason, OJ Anderson Sam Madison RW Mcquarters are important moves and help win championships. The team that gets Andre Johnson might hit a home run. I also agree with your comment about top 10 picks especially how the rookies are paid now. Look at the 49ers and Seahawks doing it with underpaid qbs. The Shockey trade is a good example of how draft picks for an established player don't work. Another great move was getting Eli. On the other hand moving up to get RG3 who with another injury may turn out to be a bust. The draft is a crap shoot.

No need Ryu draft running backs that high in the nfl today. None. This isn't 1999.

premium choices to injury -

K. Phillips
S. Smith
C. Sintim (for better or worse)
J. Alford

M. Austin was a swing and miss

Chad Jones.

or Kenny Phillips, injury or not, would be considered bad draft picks. Smith went to a pro-bowl with the Giants and Phillips was a solid safety for his entire contract - even with the injury.

That have a chance to emerge and validate some of those so called bad drafts from the last few years. It's still early. Guys like Wilson, randle, Jernigan, Mosley, Moore, nassib, even Beatty... These guys emerge over the next year or two and those drafts look damn good.

Some of those younger players never really got their shot until now. Let's see what happens. I'm hopeful.

as many free agents as the Giants this year if their drafting had been largely successful...

2009 - First all, it's relatively easy to hit on a first round pick. Nicks was a good pick. However, you are forgetting the fact the Giants really wanted the Maryland receiver (Hayward-Bey)that Oakland grabbed way too early. If the giants grabbed Bey over Nicks then that would have been the wrong pick.
Rest of 2009 - Sintum - the #13 pick in the second round 2 - was a disaster of a pick.
Beatty = was a good pick. He has done OK. Well enough to get a huge pay day.
Barden and Beckum - 2 poor picks in the 3rd round. Don't forget they traded up for Barden.
Brown was a good pick in round 4.
The rest of the draft was crap.

2010 - Reese hit rounds 1 and 2 nicely. JPP and LJ were great picks. Round 3 we'll never know about. The rest of that draft sucked serious balls. He didn't hit on ONE player after round 3. You have to hit on some of the mid and late round picks to have a good draft.

2011 - He finally hit on a late round pick with LB Williams, but Prince (first round) was the only other player, again round 1, that was any good. Austin in the 2nd round was another disaster of a pick. He was even worse than Sintum. We still don't know enough about Jernigan.

Again, I would argue that hitting in rounds 1 and 2 is pretty easy to do given all the info the GMs and scouts have. Reese has done really well in round 1 and then struggled greatly after that. He has hit on a few players, but not nearly enough to build a consistent winning team. I like what he has done the last 2 drafts. Hopefully he has turned things around.

two statements in your post stand out. Basically you stated that after Brown (4th rounder), the rest of that draft was crap and in the next year everyone draft in round 4 and above sucked.

You and some of the other guys are ripping the Giants for not hitting on more late round draft picks as proof that they aren't drafting well enough. I disagree with how much importance your giving the back end of the draft.

I also disagree with the common belief that there have been too many projects, prospects, and reaches in the recent drafts because in some eyes, everyone who doesn't immediately start was a project, etc... But that's a discussion for another thread.

Since our devastating DL in our Super Bowl win over the Pats who have we put on that line? JPP who has had shown allpro play followed by way more poor play, Moore who I like a lot, Joseph who left via FA, Kuhn, Austin, Hankins, etc. Our DL has taken a huge step back.

Who have we brought in at LB through the draft?

Who have we brought in on the OL through the draft? There have been way too many misses. Pugh looks like a nice pick. Beatty has his question marks. That's it unless you count Richburg. That is awful considering how many picks we spent on OL.

We hit big with Prince at corner but he is a first round pick. Who else?

What have we done at safety? Hill was nice but not a draft pick. We have a lot of questions there now too. Physically I think Brown can play but he was also our starting safety when we were giving up big play after big play to have one of the worst defenses in the NFL. Excuse me if I am skeptical about him.

My point is that you can see why Seattle and SF are who they are and why they continue to be successful year after year. I would not trade our two super bowls for a playoff birth every year. However, it doeant have to be one of the other. Seattle and SF don't hit on every pick but they draft well. It doesn't matter if you are a team like Denver where you have older players taking up a big piece of the salary cap or a young team trying to rebuild like Seattle was just a short time ago. The draft is equally important. It is the easiest way to turn a shitty team into a good team or restock a title contender with cheap talent. The reason for our slide has been our lack of success in the draft. Even if you compare us to other NFL teams in the draftand we look average it does not matter. We have declined and there is a reason for that. Our OL and DL have taken huge steps back and that iis because we were never really able to replace the players we lost on the lines. We attempted to through the draft but it hasn't worked. That is the ultimate story.

in missing the playoffs BETWEEN SUPER BOWL WINS. Frustrating for sure but at least you get a top draft pick those years and the team shakes things up and the team comes out fired up.

I don't see us missing the playoffs this year.

particularly well. So many two thru five misses.But without being truly knowledgeable about the new offense, I have a hunch that our draft choices will prosper more and our team will be more successful without so much dependence on those long heaves, no effective screens, slants and short stuff into space etc plus a renewed emphasis on speed.

thought. or maybe it is in the process. we cannot know.

'type' vs 'potential', it seems we have gone the wrong way on that a few times, especially on front 7 defense.

IMO a great indicator of draft success is how many of your draft picks become NFL players, whether for you or another team. Using that measure...over the last 5 years 17 of their 38 draft picks are out of the league. That's 45%. Compare that to Baltimore (7%), Seattle (17%), or Green Bay (15%) over the same span...completely unacceptable. Stomach turning, really.

has expressed he was not happy with the Giants draft choices over pass few years.

I think they draft near average overall but show weaknesses in some areas. They haven't done well in the later rounds (yes, a few exceptions) and they have had trouble drafting linebackers.

No team drafts what I'd call great. And it is a crapshoot and should be an educated guess instead. The Giants have gotten better at drafting WRs though. That was a big problem until just a few years ago.

debate with another poster (forgot who) that was able to show me a good analysis of how Jerry Reese has done a fairly decent job drafting AFTER excluding players that got injured. I believe we stuck to the premium picks (rounds 1 thru 3).

Many people want to ignore any analysis that doesn't compare Giants to other teams, but that level of detail is not always needed to prove the point.

Biggest two weaknesses I have with Jerry Reese's Drafts are 1) ignoring certain positions for too long (OL,LB) in an effort to focus on premium positions, and 2) not getting enough decent backup values with the later picks.

You all have overrated JPP. Take out 2011 and he has done nothing. Inuries or not, he cannot stay healthy and has had little impact in 2010, 2012 and 2013. So how is a player who had ONE great season considered a great pick?

In comment 11765038 djstat said:

Quote:

You all have overrated JPP. Take out 2011 and he has done nothing. Inuries or not, he cannot stay healthy and has had little impact in 2010, 2012 and 2013. So how is a player who had ONE great season considered a great pick?

b/c without him the Giants don't win the Super Bowl.

in in the face of the pain are things you can account for to some extent in drafting.

its a cop out to put it on 'bad luck'

JPP, for example, came out of nowhere, so you had little proof of long term endurance. on the other hand, he sort of proved the idea of pure athletics and power and potential on DL.

j_rud --

Are you sure on those percentages of the other teams ? Baltimore only had 7% of their draft picks make it ?? Out of 40 draft picks....that's only 3 players. I thought Ozzie Newsome was doing a pretty good job down there.

And Seattle at 17% seems awful low.

That they thought were "steals" at the time. My problem with a lot of these were they could have been taken a round or 2 later... And you can't take these chances over and over again with picks 2-4.

and the league norm. There is a certain element of risk and "hit or miss" with any draft choice. We tend to look at things only in Giants vacuum, so of course every miss becomes magnified. I would bet (without having the facts) that when compared to other teams, our drafting has been fairly good, certainly in the top half. Definitely some teams have recently done better, but on average I would wager that we are in the 30-50% efficiency range (top half of the league).

2012 David Wilson in the 1st round. Even healthy he has not shown to be a starting RB.

2012 Jayron Hosley
2012 Adrien Robinson (JPP of TE)

2011 Marvin Austin a terrible risk in the 2nd round
2011 Jerrel Jernigan showed nothing until late last year. A 3rd round pick has got to contribute much more.

2009 Clint Sintim in the 2nd round
2009 Ramses Barden a waste of a trade up in the 3rd round.
2009 Travis Beckum a waste of a 3rd round pick.

Missing out on Sintim (who even though couldn't play because of injury was projected to play in the Giants 4-3 although he played in the 3-4 in college- IMO that's a big gamble in the 2d Round; gambles like that should be reserved for the 4th Round or lower), Barden, who ran 10 yds. in 1.62 and thus could be suspected of having difficulty in getting separation at the NFL level and Beckum, who weighed 234 lbs.- a 234 TE, what were they thinking?


The Giants made other draft pick mistakes over the years but missing on a 2d and two 3ds in one draft has really hurt the team. We're scrambling to recover by signing so many FAs this year.

In comment 11765047 Named Later said:

Quote:

j_rud -- Are you sure on those percentages of the other teams ? Baltimore only had 7% of their draft picks make it ?? Out of 40 draft picks....that's only 3 players. I thought Ozzie Newsome was doing a pretty good job down there. And Seattle at 17% seems awful low.

Reread jrud's post. You got it reversed.

look shaky is that we picked last in every round twice in the last 6 years. Not a complaint, just an observation.

They've taken and missed a number of swings in the 2-3 rounds, which are a good indicator of the current state of the defense (which they had done a good job of supplementing via UFA).

The DL needs an infusion next offseason.

you trade up not down with the new cba and the way rookies are paid now.

At least from 2008 through 2011.

Nobody is going to have great drafts year in and year out, but the GIANTS had four or five stinkers in a row, with the jury still out on the 2012, 2013 and 2014 drafts.

And this is compounded by letting some of the successful draftees (Manningham and Joseph) walk after their first contract (plus Nicks has now left as a free agent), which means that those players have to be replaced just as quickly as guys who hung around for a few seasons before being judged as flops.

As Blue Meanie points out, if they had drafted more successfuflly, they would not have had such a poor season last year and would not have had to sign so many veteran free agents in the off-season. And this team is still full of holes.

and make no mistake about it, this was a 3-4 win team in 2013 in terms of talent.

name all the starters, still on this roster, from the third round on?

Yes, it is a crapshoot.....

Yes, the Giants have been unlucky, when you consider what happened to Smith, Wilson, JPP, Nicks, KP, TT, etc.

There have been "reaches", there have been outright misses....all teams have that.....but Giant drafts, while not producing starters after the second round, just have not really contributed.....for the most part, they contribute like journeymen or other teams castoffs...

The Tuck's, Jacob's, Bradshaw's and Cofield's are few and far between.....

While the cap has created a more level playing field, it also makes the guys in the front office just as important as the guys on the field.....

Can anyone imagine a football team, with Cashman making the decisions?

Oh man, I'm sorry j_rud.......I just re-read your post (after my 2nd cup of coffee). Makes MUCH more sense now.

I think where Jerry Reese got into trouble with his Drafts was, when he failed -- he failed spectacularly !!!
Steve in South Jersey listed JR's primary blunders above, and that's 7 or 8 Premium picks with maybe 1 decent contributor.

Eli's first Super Bowl by signing free agents.
40% of the offensive line were free agents. The most dangerous WR (Plax)
was a free agent and the starting MLB and RLB were free agents and help
in the defensive backfield were signed from the Ravens and Dolphins.
That's 5-8 free agents.
Who designed this team?

In comment 11765075 Bobby Epps said:

Quote:

The Giants made other draft pick mistakes over the years but missing on a 2d and two 3ds in one draft has really hurt the team. We're scrambling to recover by signing so many FAs this year.

This.

A team is going to miss on a 1st or 2nd round pick. It happens with every team.

You can make up for it if you get a surprise hit on a later pick. But you can't compound it by also bombing on the later draft picks as well.

You need some sort of cost control. No one is asking for guys after the 3rd round to be stars. What is asked is for them to be part of the "middle class" of the team. Those are the guys who fortify your special teams or can fill in for a short period when a player gets hurt.

If you are failing to draft them, the only way to make up for it is to go into free agency each year and either pay market price or hope for short term bargains until they no longer become bargains anymore.

Yes, the Giants have been hurt by poor drafting. They wouldn't be replacing nearly 60% the roster this year if they were doing well at it.

How much better could he have done in 2008 than drafting Phillips and Thomas from the last position in the first and second rounds. Phillips, as John Mara stated, should have been a pro-bowl level safety for years to come, with Terrell Thomas joining him.

Do you remember Thomas' numbers from 2010, his third year as a Giant? A hundred and one solo tackles, five picks (for the second year in a row), four forced fumbles and five tackles in the backfield.

Steve Smith led the NFC in receptions and was one behind Welker for the league title. He made many vital receptions in the 2007 playoffs. He must get ticked when they go right from Tyree's catch to Burress' TD reception, not showing Smith's effort on 3rd and 11 to get up the sideline for a first down before being knocked out of bounds.

JPP looked like the draft choice of the 21st century so far with his out-of-this-world play in 2011. His shoulder and back problems cut back on his abilities and threaten his career. For better or worse, he is not the warrior type like LT and Emmitt Thomas who insist on playing when hurt even if it damages their careers long term. I would have liked to see a Justin Tuck mentoring and advising JPP as he tries to reach stardom again.

I don't know if Linval Joseph's play with the Giants was hindered by by his shoulder and back weaknesses, but the Vikings are getting very concerned about the health of their big free-agent tackle, who missed TOAs and is now making that vow to be "ready by training camp."

I don't see where Wilson had any injury history in college, so again it is bad luck for Reese that Wilson suffers what may be a career-ending back injury.

If there were any advice I might give to Reese, and he hasn't asked yet, it would be to just avoid choosing any college kids with a history of serious foot, ankle, knee, or spine injury.

guys who have a penchant for back flips. Wonder why there are neck/back problems?

but for all of those that still think the Giants draft have been poorer and just looking at the misses...just answer me one question...

what teams have had better drafts.

Seattle? Who picked Aaron Curry with the 4th pick in entire draft. Lawrence Jackson another of their ones is on his 3rd team.

San Fran....with picks like Kentwan Balmer and AJ Jenkns....in the first.

Have you seen Baltimore's draft of late? Isn't Ozzie a genius?

For every Earl Thomas, Patrick Willis, JPP....comes misses...and a lot more than you might think.

Not to mention, having good teams, makes it even harder for rookies to play or even make it on rosters (I suspect this is Reese and Coughlin's biggest issue with each other)and by the way, UDFA certainly should count into ones draft.

Remember, the NFL makes it very hard to keep winning.
worse positions in draft....more visibility leads to higher salaries putting pressure on cap and more poaching.

we can use injuries as an excuse...but every team can do the same.

The Giants mistake was loyalty due to the success that lead to staying with older players and stale play calling "while delivering a slightly above average draft".

as a fan....I want perfect drafts too....but that does not happen. Enjoy the hits and hope they minimize the misses.

but it is really mitigated to a large degree because of individual team needs in front of you, strategies, BPA, etc.

Not arguing it has some basis, but relatively minor when you are discussing overall results in a 7-round draft over some length of years.