Schadenfreude is one of the most appealing of human emotions. I can’t say I’m immune to it. Fans and writers of the Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Commanders are understandably gleeful over the Dallas Cowboys’ trade of Micah Parsons to Green Bay for two first round picks and defensive tackle Kenny Clark. Like the New York Giants, they won’t have to deal with Parsons twice every season, though all NFC East teams will see him once because they play Green Bay this year.
Giants fans, though, should be more circumspect about it than Eagles and Commanders fans. After all, four years ago the Giants were on the clock in the 2021 NFL Draft with Parsons still on the board at No. 11. He was there for the taking. Instead, then-GM Dave Gettleman traded down to No. 20. The haul of draft picks he got was considered admirable at the time, and as talented as Parsons obviously was, he played mostly off-ball linebacker in college, not considered a premium position, and there were character concerns as well.
Unfortunately, this is what the Giants got with those picks:
- No. 20: Kadarius Toney
- No. 164: Used in trade-up with Denver from No. 76 to No. 71 to draft Aaron Robinson
- 2022 first-round pick (No. 7): Evan Neal
- 2022 fourth-round pick (No. 112): Daniel Bellinger
Beyond that fiasco, the Giants have a pretty decent history of regrettable trades themselves. Here are a few:
1964: Sam Huff traded to Washington
After three consecutive trips to the NFL Championship Game, the Giants traded future Hall of Fame linebacker Sam Huff to Washington for defensive back Dick James and defensive end Andy Stynchula. Huff had been reassured by Wellington Mara that he wouldn’t be traded. The Giants wound up going 2-10-2, the start of their 17-year “wilderness era” in which they made zero playoff appearances.
1972: Fran Tarkenton traded back to Minnesota
When the Giants acquired Fran Tarkenton from Minnesota in 1967, it looked as if their wilderness era was going to be a short one. Tarkenton led them to consecutive 7-7 seasons, then 6-8, and then a 9-5 season in which they were eliminated from the playoffs on the last day of the season. After regressing to 4-10 in 1972, though, Tarkenton demanded a trade and was granted his wish. The Giants never did better than 6-10 until Phil Simms got them back to the playoffs in 1981, after Tarkenton’s replacement, Norm Snead, went 8-6 in 1972. Tarkenton took the Vikings to the Super Bowl in 1974, 1975, and 1977.
2018: Giants trade Jason Pierre-Paul to Tampa Bay
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One of the most fearsome pass rushers the Giants have ever had, Jason Pierre-Paul was traded by Gettleman to Tampa Bay after two-injury plagued seasons and a 2017 season which was good but less than several of his best. The Giants got a third-round pick that became defensive tackle B.J. Hill and a fourth-round pick swap that became quarterback Kyle Lauletta. Meanwhile, JPP returned to his early form and had three good seasons as a Buccaneer, including making the Pro Bowl in 2020. Hill was a good player with the Giants, so this wasn’t an awful outcome, but Gettleman later traded him for Billy Price, sealing the fate of the original trade and qualifying it for this list.
2019: Giants trade up for DeAndre Baker
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In 2019, Gettleman traded up into the first round after having already taken Daniel Jones and Dexter Lawrence. With the No. 30 pick he obtained, he selected cornerback Deandre Baker. Baker was a disaster on the field, showing little ability to stay with good receivers and no ability to intercept passes. He also got into trouble off the field, although all charges against him were ultimately dropped. He was gone after a single season. The Giants gave Seattle the Nos. 37, 132, and 142 picks in order to move up. The move was well-intentioned, because the Giants desperately needed help at cornerback, and a run on cornerbacks was expected near the bottom of the first round and top of the second. That run did, in fact, materialize, and none of the cornerbacks taken just after Baker lived up to their draft promise. Some have at least been useful players, though: Byron Murphy, Rock-Ya Sin, Sean Murphy-Bunting.
In truth, it will be a while before we know who won the Micah Parsons trade. For now, Green Bay is likely to be the winner, because it automatically makes them a serious Super Bowl contender. Whether things actually work out that way remains to be seen. In the long run, it’s possible that Dallas has the last laugh. Kenny Clark appears to be on the downside of his career, but he had nine sacks and 61 total pressures as recently as 2023.
More importantly, the two first-round picks Dallas got could bring them two great players. In 2019, Giants fans were not happy that Gettleman traded Odell Beckham Jr. to Cleveland for Jabrill Peppers plus first- and third-round picks. The Giants were ridiculed for the trade, e.g., by Bill Barnwell of ESPN:
Something dramatic and inexplicable needs to have happened in those 13 days to make this trade make sense because it otherwise reads as if the Giants were hacked. Months after paying him a $20 million signing bonus, they traded one of the league’s best young players at any position to the Browns for the sort of offer the computer would reject in a video game.
This has the potential to be a franchise-resetting trade, the sort of deal that gets everyone fired and leaves fans muttering for decades about what could have been. The Giants have never had a player like OBJ before. Now, they don’t have him — or much of anything — at all.
We know how that ended. OBJ had one elite season as a Brown and has been compromised by injuries ever since, not playing a single full season and never even reaching 600 yards in any season. Meanwhile, the Giants drafted a guy named Dexter Lawrence with the first-round pick they got in the trade (Oshane Ximines was the other player they got).
The Giants may even have learned their lesson by holding onto the No. 3 pick this year and using it on Parsons’ successor at Penn State, Abdul Carter, who looked in training camp as if he might have a Parsons-sized impact in the NFL. On the other hand, Joe Schoen repeated Gettleman’s move of trading back into the first round this year to get Jaxson Dart. He’s hoping it works out less like the trade-up Gettleman made for Baker and more like the trade-up Baltimore made in 2018 to get Lamar Jackson at the end of the first round. For now, though, Giants fans may want to stifle their giggles, remembering the team’s own somewhat sordid history of big draft trades.
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