Reading the draft tea leaves

Morning guys: Just 42 days until the draft; hard to believe where the time goes when one is having fun!

Have been working on updating our 2016 mock and without question trying to settle on a pick for the Giants is about as hard as it gets for any team in the opening round. Indeed, there are as many as 8-10 players that one can make the case they should, or at least could be the Giants pick with the 10th pick. Given our affinity for the Giants we have been scouring the pro day dispatches for any hint as to who they might be focusing in on given that in recent years one could usually follow where Jerry Reese and company were visiting and they’d pretty much lead one to the pick. So we are tad shocked when the first (and as far as we can tell so far only) campus workout that Reese has attended was that of Georgia OLB Leonard Floyd who wasn’t even on our ‘short list’ of the 8-10 cases that could be made.

Like most of the faithful our initial response was “NO WAY JOSE, NO CHANCE, NOT NOW, NOT EVER’ would the Giants be taking Floyd with the 10th pick. So what were they doing at Georgia? Thinking about a trade down? Blowing some smoke? Made some sense, but that’s simply not what the Giants do. What they do is go check out guys that their scouts have a high grade on. And, as perhaps the original ‘follow the money’ guy who lives by the old Yogi maxim that “one can see a lot by just watching” it is simply hard to get around the notion that the Giants were in Georgia looking at Floyd because they really like him as a prospect.

First, a couple of basic principles. Most importantly, this is not going to be a case of Reese ‘falling in love’ with the player as they like to say. The Giants have a process when it comes to the draft. Over the course of a season they will have at least one regional scout and two area scouts visit each of the major programs across the country at different times during the year who grade all the players. Then before the combine all the grades are aggregated and the Giants put together their preliminary board and identify the guys they want to focus in at the combine and at the pro days.

Second, the notion that on draft day the Giants sit around their war room checking off the players selected ahead of them and then take the ‘best player available’ left on the board when they get on the clock is a myth. Or at least it has been for the past 15-20 years. True, there been a couple of instances this century – Kiwi in 2007 and Prince in 2011 – when the Giants did take a BPA, but both were players they really didn’t expect to be there.

However, since at least 2000 the Giants have done one of two things with their top pick. Either they have targeted a particular position or issue: CB in 2001, DL in 2003, DB in 2006, WR in 2009, WR or OL in 2013 and OT in 2015. Or they have gone into the draft targeting a particular player they really liked: Shockey in 2002, Eli in 2004, Sinorice Moss in 2006 (nobody gets it right every year!), Kenny Phillips in 2008, JPP in 2010, David Wilson in 2012 and Justin Pugh in 2013. Sometimes those guys were at prime positions of need; other years not so much as they were just guys the Giants thought would be special players.

So where does the potential interest Floyd fit in that mix. Who knows for sure, but I suspect it may be close to the former. My guess is that the fact that the Giants are looking at an edge rusher suggest that maybe they ain’t done with the pass rush quite yet. It also suggests that the Giants plans to get back on the plus side this off-season may have less to do with filling a so-called shopping list of needs and more with reinventing the pass rush.

And it’s not hard to figure why. The Giants formula in both 2007 and 2011, for example, combined a solid passing attack and a dynamic pass rush. Plus one doesn’t have to look far past this year’s Super Bowl win by Denver which was powered almost exclusively by their pass rush. Indeed, in the end, one can make a pretty good case that the Giants could sign (or draft) all the Pro Bowl RTs, MLBs and free safeties in the world, but it will mean diddly squat if they can’t generate a pass rush. On the other hand, get back to rushing the passer and they could have Daffy Duck at FS, Donald (Duck or Trump – your choice) at MLB and Elmer Fudd at RT and still be solid contenders.

The other thing that people can probably take to the bank is that the team the Giants field in 2016 will not be your grandfather’s team. At least it won’t be Dylan, Cooper and Walker’s grandfather’s team. Indeed, there are pretty good odds that one is going to see a sea-change in the way the Giants try and win games this fall. The past few years under Tom Coughlin, for example, the basic philosophy was essentially very conservative: don’t turn the ball over on offense; don’t give up the big-play on defense; and get the game into the 4th quarter where you let your QB do his thing then.

In contrast, the front office has wanted a much aggressive approach on both sides of the ball. On offense that means spreading the field, creating mismatches and generating big plays off those mismatches. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next couple of year’s Ben McAdoo evolves into a mad hatter of offensive game planners with all kinds of 4 and 5-receiver sets with WRs lining up in the backfield and RBs flexing out into space.

(Clearly, the Giants still need more playmakers at the skill positions to be truly effective in that regard, but that will come. In fact, my early assumptions were that the Giants would use free agency this year to try and get the defense back to a point where it was at least respectable and then use the draft to add to the skill positions to try and make the offense scary good and that is still a possibility. That’s why a Zeke Elliott makes a lot of sense. Not because the Giants need another RB; but one can do so many things with a talented guy like Elliott; other team plays run you flex him out and challenge them to cover him; other team plays pass keep him in the backfield and run the ball, etc. At the same time, though, while the Giants would probably like to upgrade at RB, they probably also feel that in a worst case scenario the offense will still be pretty good if its just Jennings and Vereen at the position again in 2016, although I would expect Mcadoo to maybe use them a little differently. Same story at TE. And its probably something of a similar story at RT. Bu getting in on the likes of Okung and Penn etc. the Giants have clearly indicated that they would like to upgrade there, but they also don’t appear to be so concerned that, unlike the situation on the DL, they aren’t going to just throw money at the position. In the end, they probably will find a decent FA OT just hoping to have a job, but they probably also feel that even in the worst case scenario in which they bring back Newhouse, Jerry and Hart, they would still have a unit that was top 5 in the league last year in fewest sacks allowed.)

I would expect an even more dramatic change in philosophy on the other side of the ball. In fact, one can make a pretty good case that the reason Coughlin got fired was that he just would not make any changes to a defensive game plan that just wasn’t working. From week one to week 16 they played the same static, vanilla defense in which they rushed 4 and dropped the coverage 12-15 yards off the line of scrimmage with the goal of keeping everything in front of them and coming up and tackling the receiver once the ball was caught. It didn’t work in week, it didn’t work in week 8 and it didn’t work in week 16, but the Giants made almost no attempt to make any adjustments. Coughlin apologists will blame it all on the lack of talent, but the fact is that defense could never have worked in this era of controlled passing attacks. Bottom line is you can not win in the NFL without being able to rush the passer and if you aren’t getting there with what you are doing then you have to do something else, otherwise you got no chance.

One can probably figure that Steve Spags marching orders this coming fall are to get to the QB. And that’s where a Leonard Floyd might come in; while technically a LB, he is potentially the most dynamic edge rusher in this year’s draft. He has an explosive first step and actually gathers speed on his second and third steps; he can also dip and bend and change direction. And he’s got a good motor. The one thing he didn’t have at Georgia was a lot of production, but they tended to use him in so many different roles that they never really tapped into his pass-rush potential (and the coach got fired!) If he indeed becomes a Giant, line him up on the weakside, bring him up to the LOS and tell him to get after the ball.

What could be just as interesting is what the Giants do with their other premium picks on April 29th. If they did get another pass rusher, would they then look to add a WR, RB or TE. Or would they stick with the defense either at CB, S or even another pass rusher. One guy a little under the radar that would be intriguing at #40, although again a little outside the box might be Bronson Kaufusi. Even though it is a really good year at DT I am not sure the Giants use a premium pick on someone at the position as its likely they wouldn’t start the year as any more than the 3-4 guy at the position, someone like Kaufusi who isn’t really a DE or DT – and isn’t really even a 5T DE – but is a really athletic, might be an intriguing option to give you some depth at DE and a potentially really good inside pass rusher on 3rd downs. Just a thought.

Have a nice day!