Sections of the New York Giants fan base were aghast on Monday when Todd McShay selected Jeremiyah Love for New York at No. 5, saying “league intel” makes him believe the Giants are seriously considering the Notre Dame running back.
“But … Saquon Barkley was a mistake.”
“But … positional value.”
“But … that never works.”
“But … that breaks the Big Blue View Rules for Draft Success.”
This is not about whether the Giants should or should not select Love in the 2026 NFL Draft if they have the opportunity. This is about Giants fans needing to understand that none of what has happened in the past in terms of how the Giants made decisions matters.
Saquon Barkley doesn’t matter. Dave Gettleman’s mistakes don’t matter. Joe Judge’s beliefs don’t matter. Brian Daboll’s opinions and evaluations of players don’t matter. General manager Joe Schoen’s belief in positional value doesn’t matter much, either, even though Schoen still has his job.
Schoen adamantly says, “I’m still the general manager of the team and my role has not changed,” but he knows that the way he thinks has to change.
The Giants are now John Harbaugh’s show. Harbaugh does not care about Barkley. He does not care about Gettleman. He does not care what Daboll thought. We have seen with Evan Neal and Josh Ezeudu that he does not care if a player failed under a previous regime. If he liked that player during past draft evaluations, he wants to see for himself if the player can be salvaged.
Harbaugh doesn’t care about positional value or need at No. 5 in the draft. He thinks differently about the game than the majority of head coaches, with the market-setting contracts given to fullback Patrick Ricard and punter Jordan Stout as evidence.
Schoen understands the Giants’ new world.
“Have I evolved? Yes. Do I like it? No,” Schoen said at the NFL Scouting Combine. “When you think about what Malik [Nabers] would get on the open market or even Jaxson [Dart] or Abdul [Carter], you get a surplus value from taking those players where you took them. There are some positions where you don’t get the benefit of that.
“Does that mean I won’t take a player because of that? No. I’ll take the best player available.”
Schoen added that the Giants will pick “The best football players that we can pick that will fit the schemes that we’re going to run.”
It is time for Giants fans to evolve, too.
I had Ryan Dunleavy of the New York Post on Tuesday’s ‘Valentine’s Views’ podcast, which you can listen to in full using the player above.
The conversation with Dunleavy really got cooking when I said this:
“What happened with Saquon Barkley doesn’t matter. What Dave Gettleman did doesn’t matter. What Pat Shurmur and Joe Judge and Brian Daboll and now, honest to God, even Joe Schoen thought about running back value no longer matters. This is John Harbaugh’s show, and it’s John Harbaugh’s decision, and he doesn’t see value the way anybody else does.”
The unsaid part of that is that Harbaugh has an 18-year track record of success that gives him the right to believe he sees things correctly. He has earned the right to be trusted to build a better version of the Giants.
Here is Dunleavy’s response:
“He [Harbaugh] sees value the way I see value, actually, which makes me feel good. It’s what I’ve been screaming about for seven years. It’s what people online give me a hard time about, which is he wants great players. I want great players. Everybody should want great players.”
‘The Dave Gettleman gold jacket test’
Every year I get asked I think the Giants need most in the draft. My answer is almost always “difference-making” or “game-changing” players.
Gettleman’s mistake in drafting Barkley was not that he didn’t identify a “difference-making” or “game-changing” player. He did. He just failed to understand that beginning a rebuild with a running back whose value the Giants as constructed would never be able to maximize was a bad idea. They would never get where they wanted to go that way.
Dunleavy added that what happened with the Giants seven years ago “is totally irrelevant to John Harbaugh.”
“I haven’t had a chance to really be around John Harbaugh at all. But know people who know him. And my sense is he believes in great players. The old Dave Gettleman gold jacket test,” Dunleavy said. “If I’m going to get a Hall of Fame safety, Caleb Downs, if I’m going to get a Hall of Fame running back, Jeremiyah Love, if I’m going to get a Hall of Fame inside linebacker, Sonny Styles, well, that’s better than getting a average right tackle or an average wide receiver.
“Just because positional value tells me those guys are bet cheaper on their second contracts than uh than the other guys. Well, I want a great player. I truly believe it’s a new day in terms of that. It’s the day I’ve always believed. It is John Harbaugh saying, ‘Give me great players’. That’s what wins games, Jimmies and Joe’s.”
Here are more takeaways from my discussion with Dunleavy.
Don’t discount Francis Mauigoa
In recent discussions about Love, Styles, Downs, and even the idea of trading down from No. 5 and perhaps targeting Penn State guard Vego Ioane, the thought of selecting Miami offensive tackle Francis Mauigoa has been overlooked.
Perhaps that is a mistake. And, I admit, I have been among the guilty parties.
“I obviously believe very strongly in the running back, in the great running back,” Dunleavy said. “That said, I wouldn’t pick Jeremiyah Love.
“I look at the Giants and I say I don’t like the right guard situation at all. I don’t like the cornerback situation very much. Wide receiver, too, still kind of scares me … I don’t like the defensive tackle situation at all.“
Enter Mauigoa.
“If I was the GM, first I would try to trade down from five to somewhere in the top 10. That would be the first thing I’d want to do because I think there’s enough other spots I could fill. If I was five and I was the Giants right now, today, reserve the right to change because right now they’re starting Evan Neal or Josh Ezeudu at right guard. So, right now, if it was me, based on things I’ve heard, I would draft Francis Mauigoa to be my right guard year one, maybe year two, and then eventually be the right tackle who replaces Jermaine Euemunor.
“There are people in the NFL who think he is a day one starting right tackle, and there are people who think he has All-Pro bowl caliber ceiling as a right guard. There are people who are terrified of having a guy who hasn’t played right guard learn right guard in the NFL. But there are people who say he profiles as a better road-grading, powerful guard in the NFL.”
Incidentally, Joe Schoen and other Giants representatives were at Miami’s Pro Day on Monday.
Have the Giants gotten better?
The accepted narrative is that with Harbaugh’s pedigree and the veteran staff he has assembled, the Giants will be coached better than they have been since the Tom Coughlin era. Have they gotten more talented, though?
Like Big Blue View’s Tony Del Genio, Dunleavy isn’t certain.
“It feels kind of like they took their strengths over here and put them over here, and they took their weaknesses over here and they put them over here, and they just kind of reshuffled the deck,” Dunleavy said. “I don’t know that I think the Giants got much better in free agency. So, to me, that’s a little discouraging. I think their overall team grade, to use a Madden term, is probably about the same.”
[NOTE: Take the time to give the full show a listen. There is a LOT that I have not covered here.]
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