Luke Easterling of Athlon Sports joins the ‘Valentine’s Views’ podcast
The New York Giants need to find a new quarterback for the 2025 NFL season. No one needs to put that up a flashing neon billboard in Times Square, or fly a plane over MetLife Stadium carrying a banner to tell the organization that is the case.
They know.
The Giants get slapped in the face on Sunday with a reminder that their quarterback of the future could already be in place when rookie Michael Penix Jr. of the Atlanta Falcons makes his first career NFL start when Atlanta hosts the Giants.
The Giants, as fans well know, had the sixth overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. After a failed effort to trade up to No. 3 to select Drake Maye, the Giants passed on Penix (No. 8) to Atlanta, J.J. McCarthy (No. 10, Minnesota Vikings) and Bo Nix (No. 12, Denver Broncos).
The Giants, of course, selected electrifying rookie wide receiver Malik Nabers, who is putting together one of the best rookie seasons ever for a wide receiver despite the Giants’ revolving door at and untenable play from the quarterback position.
Will the Giants ultimately be proven right? Will they be better off with Nabers and a top quarterback out of the 2025 draft class? Or, should they have used the 2024 sixth pick on a quarterback and taken whatever was available to them in the 2025 draft?
The question has to be framed with the reminder that the best quarterbacks in the upcoming class — Shedeur Sanders and Cam Ward — are commonly looked at by draft analysts as being roughly equivalent to McCarthy Penix and Nix and a cut below Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels and Maye, who went 1,2,3.
Athlon Sports NFL Draft analyst Luke Easterling was a guest on the ‘Valentine’s Views’ podcast on Friday, and I put that question to him.
Easterling said the Giants “could” regret that decision, but did not seem to think they would.
“Right now the Giants are in position to take either Cam Ward or Shedeur Sanders. From where I’m sitting now they are very much graded in the same range that I had all three of those quarterbacks (McCarthy, Penix, Nix),” Easterling said.
If the Giants had already selected their quarterback, Easterling mentioned players like cornerback Will Johnson and wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan as possibilities for the Giants.
“Do I like that better than being able to take Shedeur Sanders or Cam Ward and knowing that I already have Malik Nabers?,” Easterling said. “I don’t know that there’s a better option, and it’s hard to because of the variable.
“Here’s what I know. Malik Nabers is a stud. Malik Nabers is already, I think, one of the most talented, best, receivers in the league and now I get to to have my pick at the top of the draft of these quarterbacks that are comparable to the ones I was able to choose from last year.
“It’s hard for me to say I’d rather have it the other way.”
Shedeur or Cam?
In his most recent mock draft, Easterling has quaterbacks going 1-2. Easterling selected Shedeur Sanders for the Raiders at No. 1 and Cam Ward for the Giants at No. 2.
“I see them as one and two in the quarterback class and just nobody else close, personally,” Easterling said. “They might go one and two in the draft. For me at this point they’re very borderline first-round picks, period.”
Does Easterling like one better than the other?
“I think they’re 1A and 1B at this point,” he said. “I think they do a lot of the same things well. I think they have a lot of both mental and physical traits that will translate to the next level. I really love their ability to create plays out of structure I believe they have enough arm talent to succeed at the next level. I think they’ve got that that just clutch big play gene, whatever it is those instincts to make plays and and just make the right throws and extend things and and come up with with that highlight reel play. I think they’re really great leaders — anybody that plays with them in those locker rooms at Miami and Colorado will probably say the same.
“They have a lot of attractive traits. For me it’s just if you were to compare them to last year’s class where you had three guys at the top who were all bonafide number one overall, top five talent type of prospects they’re nowhere near that just because I feel like the consistency just isn’t there in terms of the accuracy, the decision-making, the physicaltraits aren’t at the elite level like we saw from Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye.”
That said, Easterling said the Giants and Raiders shouldn’t hesitate to shoot their shot.
“If a team is just so desperate for a quarterback like the Raiders and the Giants are that position just makes such a difference and if you don’t get one of those two guys in this class I just feel like everybody else in this quarterback class has even more questions than answers and that’s why you kind of got to swing to the fences and hope one of these two guys can hit their ceiling,” he said.
The Deion distraction
I have in the past voiced some hesitation about bringing Shedeur Sanders to the Giants because of the looming presence of his father, Deion ‘Prime Time’ Sanders. Emory Hunt of Football Gameplan and CBS Sports tried to dissuade my fears in a recent appearance on the podcast. Easterling joined him in saying it would be a mistake to pass on Sanders out of fear his father would be too much of a distraction.
“If you’re the owner of an NFL franchise and you genuinely want what’s best for your team that means you’ve got to have the guts to take the best player and and deal with whatever you might perceive as a distraction,” Easterling said. “You got to be able to handle all that because if you if you genuinely evaluate these two quarterbacks at the top and say they end
up with the number one pick and and they get to have their choice,if you say, man, we really think Shedeur is the better player but we really don’t want to deal with Dieon and what we think might be this sideshow thing or this distraction so we’re going to take Cam Ward instead — if you take a player that you don’t think is as good just
because you think his dad’s going to be like a distraction that’s weak to me, like that’s scared to me, that’s punting the ball on fourth-and-inches from the 39-yard line … that’s not how I would run an NFL franchise.”
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[NOTE: There is a lot more to our discussion. Click the player above to give it a listen.]
