After months of anticipation, the first round of the 2022 NFL Draft came and went in a blur for the Giants. Joe Schoen, the new general manager, addressed two significant needs and added two highly-regarded, talented players, taking edge rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux at No. 5 and offensive tackle Evan Neal at No. 7.
It can be considered an early draft haul, but a caveat (or two) is in order. Picking at 5 and 7, a team is supposed to find real talent to add to the roster. One former NFL coach said Thursday morning that there was almost no way for Schoen and the Giants to mess this up – they were going to get two excellent players, picking where they were. On defense, if it wasn’t Thibodeaux, it probably would have been cornerback Sauce Gardner, who went No. 4 to the Jets. If Travon Walker would have dropped, the Giants would have taken him at 5. If Neal had been taken by the Panthers at No. 6, the Giants would have pounced on Ickey Ekwonu at No. 7 (Carolina took him at 6). Whatever combination of offense/defense or defense/offense the Giants reeled in, the reviews likely would have been uber-positive.
There are no guarantees with any of these picks. Today’s Can’t Miss is tomorrow’s Can’t Play. Glowing pre-draft reports and buzz on these players is not always a portent of things to come. Thibodeaux might end up being a high-profile, dynamic pass rusher and Neal might be a quiet, unassuming tower of strength at right tackle. So much has to go right, though. Team fit, adaptability to coaching, time, place, health, attitude all come into play. It is always so much more than talent.
The talent part, the Giants got right. Now, all the other stuff has to coalesce for this to truly be a transcendent first round for the Giants.
The first round is not the be-all, end-all, though, as the Giants have seven more picks in this draft, including the No. 36 overall selection Friday night, high in the second round. Day 2 is a huge day for the Giants, as they hope to come out of the second and third round with players capable of making an immediate impact. Here is where the tougher and more telling work takes place for Schoen. And he knows it.
There were only so many outcomes that could transpire ahead of the Giants in the first round.
“We had been through so many scenarios, the exact scenario that played out, we’ve been through it probably 15 times this week,’’ Schoen said. “We would stay in my office and move stuff around, ‘What do we do here, what could we do here?’ We had a couple rhymes in place for different scenarios. It was very seamless. It was easy because where we were at five and seven, it was easy to plan for that and narrow your focus.
“[Friday] and Saturday may be a little bit different. You’ve got to look at our picks further down in the third round.’’
It was difficult for Schoen to get it wrong in the first round. The Giants need him, on Day 2 and Day 3, to separate himself from the pack and show why he was such a hot general manager prospect.
Here are five thoughts about what happened and what might happen:
1. Before we move forward, it is striking to look back to Thursday night to witness up close just how in sync Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll appear to be. They do not need time to build a relationship because they arrived with a bond formed during their four years together with the Bills in Buffalo. They did not need to figure out how the other guy evaluates players or prioritizes skill-sets because they already knew that about each other.
“We felt very comfortable,’’ Daboll said. “The defensive guys went out golfing [Tuesday morning], and the offensive staff went out and did another thing. We felt comfortable. Credit to Joe and the scouting staff. They put the time in, along with the coaches. It was a team effort. Feel like we have two good players to help us, and now it’s going to be their job to come in here, work hard, learn how we do things, and help them develop.’’
Daboll seems content to cede this time of year – roster building season, if you will – to Schoen. Once training camp takes hold and the football begins, Schoen will drift into the background and it will be Daboll taking center stage.
2. The Giants will now get to see Gardner play in their own building at MetLife Stadium, but wearing Jets green. Sauce on the side. Derek Stingley Jr. went to the Texans at No. 3. The need for help at cornerback goes from DEFCOM 3 to DEFCOM 1 depending on if James Bradberry is on the roster or not. With him, this is not a glaring gap in the defense. Without him, well, new defensive coordinator Wink Martindale is going to have to improvise and that is extremely difficult to do, manufacturing coverage. Bradberry’s salary cap hit of $21.8 million cannot be part of the financial structure in 2022 and trading him away is proving to be a difficult assignment. The Giants not selecting a corner in the first round, Schoen said, “doesn’t affect James at all. I’ve said it all along, there are contingency plans. We still have three picks tomorrow night, a fourth, two fifths and a sixth. There are plenty of picks to be had.’’
Translation: The Giants need another cornerback and will take one, most likely on Day 2. Four cornerbacks were taken in the first round and any hope by the Giants that Florida’s Kaiir Elam would be on the board in the second round was dashed when the Bills took him at No. 23. It looks as if the Giants will have to take a cornerback at No. 36 overall if they are planning for life after Bradberry. The best of the bunch are Andrew Booth of Clemson, Roger McCreary of Auburn and Kyler Gordon of Washington. The Giants have the fourth pick in the second round. Will one of these corners make it to them? If they do not take a corner Friday night, it looks as if Schoen’s “contingency plan’’ for finding a way to keep Bradberry will be enacted.
3. What about tight end? The old guard (Evan Engram, Kyle Rudolph) is gone and the replacements in free agency (Ricky Seals-Jones and Jordan Akins) are stop-gap measures. Is the second round too early to address this need? Not if the Giants want to get Trey McBride of Colorado State, the most accomplished pass-catcher in this draft class. There were no tight ends taken in the first round, so this is fertile territory, and the Giants could wait until the third round and possibly early on Day 3 to find options such as Greg Dulcich (UCLA), Jeremy Ruckert (Ohio State), Jelani Woods (Virginia) or Jake Ferguson (Wisconsin).
4. The trade buzz around Kadarius Toney was more talk than action. The Giants put it out there and not much more came of it. Toney stayed away from the first three weeks of the voluntary offseason workout program, including the voluntary minicamp, but he was in the building this week. He is a talent that needs to be shaped. Without him, Daboll’s vision of his offense becomes blurrier. Adding talent at wide receiver is not a priority, but in this NFL, the more the better. There were six receivers and no running backs taken in the first round, another indication of what the league values and how offenses work nowadays. The best on the board are George Pickens (Georgia), Skyy Moore (Western Michigan), David Bell (Purdue) and Christian Watson (North Dakota State). Adding a receiver should never be a surprise for any team.
5. The differences in the conference calls with Thibodeaux and Neal not long after the Giants took them could not have been more stark. Thibodeaux was nearly bursting through the phone line, sounding as if he injected caffeine directly into his veins. Neal, reserved, sounded as if he just woke up. There are all sorts of players, personalities and prospects. The Giants added two of the marquee names in this draft and they will be forever linked as classmates. They were both in Las Vegas on Thursday night, and after the announcements were hanging out together for the first time as teammates, the start of a journey together.
5A. A few more players for the Giants to consider Friday night: Safeties Jalen Pitre (Baylor) and Jaquan Brisker (Penn State), linebackers Leo Chenal (Wisconsin) and Nakobe Dean (Georgia). It does sound as if Schoen feels good about the depth he has assembled on the interior of the offensive line, which is an indication he is not desperate for additional bodies on Day 2.
