The Giants remain the heavy favorites for the No. 1 pick, per PFN

Pro Football Network’s simulations give the Giants the best chance to hold the first overall pick

The New York Giants will host the Indianapolis Colts in their final home game of 2024 — both of the season and the calendar year. As of Sunday morning, the Giants have just two more games remaining until their season is mercifully over and we can fully turn the page to the off-season.

Where the Giants will be drafting is going to be one of the most consequential aspects of the off-season.

And on that front, Pro Football Network’s playoff predictor currently gives the Giants a commanding 42.5 percent chance of holding the first overall pick when the dust settles.

The Giants’ next closest competitor for the first overall pick is the New England Patriots with just a 15.8 percent chance.

• New York Giants, 42.5%
• New England Patriots, 15.8%
• Jacksonville Jaguars, 9.5%
• Cleveland Browns, 9.3%
• Las Vegas Raiders, 9.0%
• Tennessee Titans, 7.9%
• Carolina Panthers, 2.3%
• Chicago Bears. 1.8%
• New York Jets, 1.6%

Holding the first overall pick could be crucial to the Giants’ rebuilding efforts. It would clear the way for them to select a quarterback of their choosing — rather than negotiating a costly trade up or hope another team doesn’t draft “their guy”. Conversely, if the Giants were to acquire a veteran starter before the draft, they could auction off the first pick to a team that’s similarly desperate for a quarterback.

However, as ESPN’s Adam Schefter notes, the Giants holding the first overall pick is contingent on them losing to the Colts and Philadelphia Eagles.

Should the Giants (somehow) win both of their remaining games, they could tumble as far as 9th in the draft order. That would also require all the other three and four-win teams losing out, but it’s at least mathematically possible.

Turning back to what’s more likely, PFN’s current odds of the Giants’ holding the first overall pick (42.5 percent) with a 2-15 record, it’s interesting just how well that lines up with their preseason predictions.

I used PFN’s playoff predictor to simulate the 2024 season 100 times back in May, and their model predicted the Giants would wind up with the first pick in 21 of those 100 simulations. Or, taken as a whole, the Giants had a 21 percent chance to get the first overall pick back in the spring. While I didn’t record the full matrix of every team’s record and draft pick for every simulation, getting the top pick 1/5 of the time had to have been one of the highest rates.

Those simulations also serve to highlight just unlikely the Giants’ season has been. Just 4 of those 100 simulations had the Giants finishing with a 2-15 record, which was the third least-likely outcome behind a 1-16 record (once) a 9-8 record (3 times).

I wrote at the time of the 1-16 season that came up in the simulations:

The second was a nightmare 1-16 season which came on the 23rd simulation. I can only assume the Giants were beset by injuries, bad luck, and several of their opponents were stronger than expected.

And as it turned out… Yeah, that’s pretty much what happened. It started with the Vikings being an absolute terror and Sam Darnold finally playing like the third overall pick. It also involved Baker Mayfield playing up to his potential while Jayden Daniels and Michael Penix played up to their pre-draft projections. Likewise, just about everything that could go wrong for the Giants has gone wrong with injuries, bad bounces, and internal strife.

But perhaps it will all be worth it and the Giants are priming themselves to make their own “worst to first” leap in 2025.

Of course, they still have two more games to play.