John Harbaugh was the happiest man in the room at his first press conference during the NFL Draft with the Giants, and of course, the biggest reasons for his wide smile were obvious.
His new team had just secured two of the top five players on its draft board — including, in a surprise, the defensive star widely regarded as the best player available. Harbaugh said the Giants had gone through “a zillion” scenarios leading up to Thursday night and not a single one had them landing Ohio State linebacker Arvell Reese and Miami tackle Francis Mauigoa.
“These are great players. These are two top-five players in this draft. You couldn’t do any better,” Harbaugh said.
But as the head coach sat beaming on the dais alongside general manager Joe Schoen, I couldn’t help but think that there was another significant reason why Harbaugh seemed more enthusiastic than everyone else in that room:
By here, I don’t mean East Rutherford. I mean running or covering an NFL team sitting at the top of the first round. The start of the night is filled with anticipation. The team always gets a really good player — or, at least, so you’d think.
Everyone is happy. But if you’re back in this spot, again and again? Then it gets old.
It has gotten old — very, very old — for the Giants. As Harbaugh waxed on about using two top-10 picks on a versatile pass rusher and an anchor for the right side of the team’s offensive line, it was hard not to think back to four years ago when the Giants basically did the same exact thing.
That year, Schoen took defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux with the fifth pick and right tackle Evan Neal at No. 7. Since 2000, only six teams have had two top-10 picks in the same draft. Among the 12 players those teams drafted include a Hall of Fame linebacker (Ray Lewis), franchise quarterbacks (Baker Mayfield and CJ Stroud) and current stars (Sauce Gardner, Garrett Wilson and Will Anderson Jr.).
It is hard to screw up two top-10 picks — and, yet, that’s what Schoen did.
Neal is a bust. Thibodeaux is expendable. Sure, most observers — including this one — agreed with the picks at the time, but that doesn’t change the cold calculus. Had the Giants aced that 2022 opportunity, they wouldn’t have had to draft for these positions at the top of the draft. Of course, they wouldn’t be at the top of the draft, which is sort of the point.
This has to be the last time for the foreseeable future that the most important day of the year for the Giants comes in late April. If it isn’t, you can rest assured that Harbaugh’s smile won’t be as wide.
For now, though, it’s hard to blame him for being a little giddy. The Giants had Reese as the No. 1 player on their draft board, and much like a year ago when edge rusher Abdul Carter fell in their laps at the third pick, the value was too good to pass up.
This defense was ranked 28th overall in yards allowed per game (359.5) and 26th in points allowed (25.8) last season. If it isn’t in the top half of the league with what Harbaugh said “absolutely” should be an elite pass rush, something’s wrong.
“As soon as I settled down, that’s what I thought about,” Reese said when asked about the talent at his position. “Dang, you got Kayvon Thibodeaux. You got Brian Burns. You got Abdul Carter. That sounds like a great situation playing alongside those guys.”
The Giants also could have had one of Reese’s teammates at Ohio State. When they made their selection at No. 10, the pick acquired in the recent trade for defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence, safety Caleb Downs was available. He was a player many draft experts thought the Giants might take at No. 5, and given the shaky backend of this defense, one who would have slotted into a start role immediately.
Instead, the Giants grabbed Mauigoa, a 6-foot-6, 329-pound lineman from Miami. When the rival Cowboys traded up a spot to take Downs at 11, it assured the decision to pass on the star safety would be revisited twice a season for the next decade or longer.
Schoen insisted the Giants were simply following their draft board, but it felt like they were making sure that quarterback Jaxson Dart and the offense received something from their first-round haul on Thursday. Mauigoa swore on national television that he was “ready to die” for Dart, who needs better pass protection to flourish.
Reese and Mauigoa will be penciled in as Day 1 starters, making the Giants much stouter up the middle than they were a year ago. That’s the benefit of picking at the top of the draft, a perch that Harbaugh rarely held during his 18 years with the Ravens.
The veteran head coach seemed downright tickled by the experience. If he’s sitting in that same spot a year from now, chances are, he’ll be just as jaded as everyone else in the room.
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