There’s renewed life around the New York Giants.
The emergence of Jaxson Dart and Cam Skattebo, as well as the Giants’ win over the Philadelphia Eagles on Thursday Night Football has energized everything around the franchise.
Fans are excited and the media ecosystem suddenly wants to talk about the Giants. Former players, analysts, pundits, and reporters are all saying that the Giants are suddenly fun, likeable, and a team the want to watch. They might not necessarily think the Giants are good or a force yet, but they’re at least interested.
That probably has something to do with the conversation around the Giants and the trade market shifting. We’re seeing fewer think pieces and listicles that involve taking the Giants roster to the chop shop and distributing their good players to other teams. Instead, there’s actual conversation about using the trade market — and rapidly approaching trade deadline — as an avenue to build the team going forward.
So with that in mind we asked the Big Blue View community what you want to see the Giants do on the trade market over the next couple weeks.
The answer was, overwhelmingly, “wheel and deal”.
I suspect that if we only included a binary choice, either buy or sell, the survey would have been split pretty evenly. But the results clearly show that fans want the team to be active.
The Giants have a couple clear weaknesses on their roster, with wide receiver and off-ball linebacker standing out in particular. The only way for the Giants to address those positions with an impact player before free agency and the draft is through the trade market.
We’ve brought up names like Chris Olave, Rashid Shaheed, Jakobi Meyers, Jerry Jeudy, and Jaylen Waddle as potential players who could be impact pieces the Giants could add through a trade.
On the flip side of that, there may also be opportunities to flip some players for future draft capital, or use them as trade chips.
Some outlets are still trying to pry Kayvon Thibodeaux loose from the Giants’ defense. That’s understandable from a surface perspective, considering he’s a good player but viewed as a third wheel behind Brian Burns and Abdul Carter. However, I suspect those pieces are written looking at a roster and not the Giants’ game tape. Thibodeaux’s stats might not compare well to Burns’ at this point, but he’s a vital member of the Giants’ defense and has become a very good all-around edge defender.
Quarterback Russell Wilson is also frequently brought up and we’ve heard that the Giants are willing to listen to offers for Wilson. That said, I suspect their price might be higher than expected on the outside, considering his dual role as a back-up and as a mentor for Jaxson Dart. Multiple players have remarked about Wilson’s value as a coach in the locker room, and the Giants have gone to pretty significant lengths in building an incubator for Dart.
I’m not sure the Giants would be quick to abandon a plan just because it’s working.
However, there might yet be a trade market for players like Evan Neal and Deonte Banks if the Giants are actually over them. They’re still young players with enough athletic upside that a team in need of a big powerful lineman or a hyper-athletic press-man corner could find value. They’re young players at high value positions who were first round picks for a reason.
Even if they fail at their first stops, those types of players usually get multiple chances.
Assuming they aren’t in the Giants’ long-term plans, either could be a part of a trade package, and the survey results suggest that this is exactly what most fans want to see.
Turning to our weekly fan confidence poll, I wrote last week that I expected to see another spike in fan confidence following the results of Thursday Night Football.
Thanks to the short turnaround last week, we didn’t get the results from Week 6 until after Thursday Night Football. Fan confidence tumbled from 72% down to 24% following the collapse against the Saints. The rout of the Eagles erased that fall, and more.
This is the most confident we’ve seen Giants fans since the start of the season, when 92% believed the team was heading in the right direction following their performance in the preseason. There’s good reason for the confidence, with the rookie duo of Jaxson Dart and Cam Skattebo giving the team an offensive identity despite the loss of Malik Nabers, as well as the Giants’ defense seeming to round into form.
I expected to see a spike, and we definitely got that.
Things are unlikely to stay rosy throughout the season, and there will almost certainly be more tough losses. This is a young team that’s leaning on rookies and second-year players at multiple positions. There are going to be ups and downs as they grow and develop, and as other team learn how to play them.
It’ll be interesting to see if fan confidence endures the ride.
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