Big Blue View
The No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft has been a quarterback in nine of the past 11 years. As of this writing, the New York Giants are still in position to have the No. 1 pick in 2026. Do they need a quarterback, though?
A surprising number of people on X think the Giants should stay put if they get the No. 1 pick, trade Jaxson Dart, and draft Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza rather than trading down. You can make the case considering that after winning two of his first three starts Dart hasn’t won another, that the hits he takes and his regular visits to the blue tent portend low longevity, and that his current head coach didn’t even have confidence in him to win Sunday’s game against the Vikings.
Dart has looked really good in a variety of advanced metrics until recently, but football is about scoring points. After a two-week stretch in which the Dart-led Giants hung 34 and 32 points on the Eagles and Broncos, two of the best defensive teams in the league, the Giants have scored 20, 24, 20, 15, 21, and 13 points in Dart’s starts, i.e., 19 points per game. That’s worse than all but five other teams’ season scoring average.
Is it Dart, or is it the weapons he has to work with? In support of the latter hypothesis, as of a month ago he had faced perfect coverage more often than all but a few other QBs while only having a slightly negative EPA on such plays:
And the coup de grace, Dart has lost more EPA because of receiver drops than all but a handful of other quarterbacks:
Reliable receivers (a) know how to get open, and (b) know how to catch the ball. They’re savvy football players rather than just athletes. The Giants for the most part have athletes but not great football players in their receiver group.
I started thinking about this last week watching the amazing Rams-Seahawks game. Players like Puca Nacua and Jaxon Smith-Njigba catch everything. Nacua in particular is a lesson for any GM. Here are his RAS scores:
Nacua was selected in the fifth round (No. 177) in the 2023 draft – the one in which Joe Schoen traded up for the more physically impressive athlete, Jalin Hyatt:
(The mediocre agility grades are interesting in light of Hyatt’s inability to get separation on most of his routes.) To rub salt in the wound, Nacua was still on the board when the Giants selected running back Eric Gray at No. 172. (Never mind the fact that the No.73 – No. 89 pick exchange with the Rams was used by them to select defensive tackle Kobie Turner.) The Giants of course were not the only team to pass multiple times on Nacua; every NFL team did. Even his draft profile was mediocre unless you’re able to note the intriguing bits with hindsight. For example Lance Zierlein of NFL.com rated him in the “Average...
