The New York Giants head into the offseason with a long to-do list. At the top, as stated in the season-ending interviews with co-owner John Mara, general manager Joe Schoen, and head coach Brian Daboll, is to find their next starting quarterback.
There are two outstanding quarterback prospects in this draft (Miami’s Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders of Colorado) and as fate would have it, the Giants hold the third overall pick and the two teams in front of them — Tennessee and Cleveland — are in the market for quarterbacks.
That leaves Schoen with several options, one is putting together a package to attempt to move up into one of the top two spots or find their quarterback(s) later in the draft by other means.
But the question hovering over the Giants is do they love one of these two players enough to mortgage the future for?
The answer is, possibly. SNY’s Connor Hughes reports that the Giants had a Day 2 grade on Sanders last year and prefer him to Ward this year.
The talk around league circles has been Sanders. It’s been that way since before the season ended. The Giants actually had a completed report on Sanders ready if he declared for last year’s draft. He would have been a target in the second or third round.
Mara made it very, very clear after the season that his commitment to this regime was for 2025 only. If he feels next year as he does now then he’ll make wholesale changes. That mandate, which NFL Network went as far as to say means playoffs, tells you there needs to be drastic changes. Mara also made it clear the top priority for the Giants is finding their franchise quarterback.
That tells me the Giants are going to do everything they can to go up and get their quarterback. The biggest question, as addressed above, is if the Titans or Browns are willing to move back.
With Ward likely not getting past Cleveland should Tennessee pass on him, the Giants might be staring at Sanders if the Browns pass. That isn’t expected to happen, though.
This is not the year to be in the market for a quarterback. There’s no Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, or Drake Maye here. It doesn’t look like they’ll be teams seeking to move up to the top of the draft this year to take either one of these quarterbacks.
With Sanders, there is also the suitability factor. The one where his famous father, Deion Sanders, could give the thumbs down on a team he feels is not a fit for his son.
Are the Giants are team Deion sees as suitable? If they aren’t, that will be a reason for them to steer clear of him should they get the chance.
But again, it is very unlikely either Ward or Sanders gets past the Titans and Browns, two desperate teams in need of facelifts.
