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.”
John Harbaugh says the Giants will play Arvell Reese at inside linebacker and WILL linebacker pic.twitter.com/mhZJPFMfMT
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.
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.
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.