‘Things I think’ after a surprising Round 1 of the NFL Draft for the NY Giants

Well, this certainly didn’t go the way the New York Giants planned it.

As all NFL teams do in preparation for the NFL Draft, the Giants ran simulation after simulation after simulation, gaming out scenarios for how they thought the first round would play out with New York having the fifth and 10th overall picks.

Not many of them included getting Ohio State linebacker Arvell Reese at No. 5 and Miami offensive lineman Francis Mauigoa at No. 10.

Mostly that is because the Giants didn’t think Reese, the No. 2 player on their board after quarterback Fernando Mendoza, would be available to them.

“We hoped, but there weren’t a lot of scenarios that we went through where he may be available,” Schoen said.

“Joe probably ran a zillion mocks,” said head coach John Harbaugh. “This one didn’t come up. This was not one that was really anticipated … this is exciting. This is not expected.”

Reese was available As ebecause of some developments that weren’t considered likely. The New York Jets took David Bailey at No. 2 instead of Reese. The Tennessee Titans at No. 4 pulled a stunner by selecting wide receiver Carnell Tate instead of a defensive player like Reese or Sonny Styles.

“Arvell is a versatile player. We’re going to play him at inside linebacker, WILL linebacker,” said head coach John Harbaugh. “Our defense is pretty flexible, position-less you might call it … he’ll be in the A Gap, the B Gap, the C Gap, the D Gap, off the edge. He’ll be moving around with all of our guys … he’s an exciting player. We are fired up to have him.”

The Giants, per Harbaugh, also had Mauigoa ranked in their top five players.

“These are great players. These are two top-five players in this draft, in our opinion. You couldn’t do any better,” Harbaugh said. “It’s two picks that strengthen us down the middle. Down the middle of our offense. Down the middle of our defense.”

You have to think Jaxson Dart is going to love Mauigoa, who said he would “die about this s–t, man.”

Harbaugh and Schoen seemed like two kids in a candy store on Thursday night. They could hardly contain themselves at what they considered to be their good fortune. As exciting as this is now, I hate to remind you that we have seen this exact draft scenario unfold for the Giants before, and not so long ago. In 2022, Schoen draft edge defender Kayvon Thibodeaux at No. 5 and offensive lineman Evan Neal at No. 7.

Mostly because of Neal’s failings that did not work out as well as was hoped.

Let’s hope Take 2 of the edge/offensive line in the top 10 plan works out better.

What about Kayvon?

As soon as the Reese pick was made I thought about Thibodeaux’s future. The Giants quickly put the word out that they weren’t interested in trading him.

“We keep all the good players as much as we can,” Harbaugh said.

What about Dex?

One of those “good players” the Giants could not keep was Dexter Lawrence, traded a few days ago to the Cincinnati Bengals for the pick that turned into Mauigoa.

“I think it was a win for everybody,” Harbaugh said. “For us, the most important thing was that it was a win for the Giants. That’s what we card about the most. We wanted Dexter to be happy, but we wanted the Giants to be taken care of first.”

As we have learned since the trade, the bottom line was regardless of the money Lawrence no longer wanted to be a Giants. In that circumstance, moving on from the player is the best thing a team can do.

Would the Giants have drafted Jeremiyah Love?

We will never know, of course, because the Arizona Cardinals took him at No. 3. If you believe Harbaugh and Schoen that Reese was higher on their board than Love, the answer would be no.

Question is, do you believe that?

It certainly would have been interesting to see how the Giants would have handled that.

Oh, Malik

Malik Nabers probably didn’t mean to be critical of Harbaugh and Schoen on Thursday night when he made a case for why the Giants should have drafted Caleb Downs, but it came off that way.

Nabers and others had free reign to say and do what they wanted unchecked during the Brian Daboll era. I suspect that Nabers, with Harbaugh in charge, is going to have to learn to be a little more careful about what he says and when he says it.

On to Day 2

As things stand right now, the Giants have only one selection — No. 37 — on Day 2 of the draft. We will have a full post on “best available players for Day 2,” but there are three players I can think of quickly who I would keep on eye on at 37 — Ohio State defensive tackle Kayden McDonald, Washington wide receiver Denzel Boston, Toledo safety Emmanuel McNeil-Warren.