Big Blue View
This year’s fifth-round option pickups defy recent thinking
People can argue till the cows come home about how good individual NFL players are. In the NFL, though, money talks. Regardless of what any GM says about how much he likes his draft picks, there is an objective way to assess whether a GM’s first round pick has been successful or not - the fifth-year option.
NFL rookie contracts are primarily of four years length, but for first-round picks, a GM has the option to extend the player’s rookie contract for a fifth year based on metrics set down in the Collective Bargaining Agreement, specifically playtime and Pro Bowl appearances. It’s a double-edged sword - on the one hand it’s a guarantee of a fairly sizable salary in Year 5 for the player, but on the other hand, the amount is usually well below what the best players would command in their fifth year.
Giants GM Joe Schoen had that difficult decision to make with Daniel Jones as soon as he started his job in 2022. In retrospect he chose poorly by declining the option, because Jones had the best year of his career that year and wound up signing a bigger contract than would have been the case had Schoen not picked up the option. Few thought his decision was bad at the time, though.
The wisdom among fans is that a good GM should hit on his first-round picks. That should be easier to do the higher you draft, i.e., the worse your team was the year before. That hasn’t been the case for the Giants, though. Here are their first-round picks from 2004-2014 (pick number indicated in the far right column):
It’s very impressive. There wasn’t a single pick who was an outright failure. There were a couple whose careers were derailed by injuries (Kenny Phillips, David Wilson) and a couple of others who were good but not great players (Aaron Ross, Prince Amukamara). The other six, though, were important contributors (including the guy they traded Philip Rivers for), and a few of them were elite. The most impressive thing is that in most of those years the Giants drafted in the lower half of the first round.
Since, then, though, it’s been a different story:
Some outright terrible picks (Ereck Flowers, Eli Apple, Deandre Baker, Kadarius Toney). Some who became significant contributors but were not good enough (Evan Engram, Daniel Jones, Deonte Banks so far). Really only Saquon Barkley, Dexter Lawrence, and Andrew Thomas can be considered elite, though Malik Nabers seems sure to reach that status if he finds a quarterback who can get him the ball. Kayvon Thibodeaux is somewhere in the middle, Evan Neal somewhere below the middle leaning toward terrible, and we’ll see about this year’s picks, Abdul Carter and Jaxson Dart. This checkered record has occurred despite the Giants drafting in the top 10 about half the time.
This raises the question: Where should a team want to draft? In one sense,...
