Giants Draft: Referendum?

This is a really big draft for the Giants.    They're coming off a horrible season - they'll tell you they finished strong - but even that was horrible.   It's big because they are teetering between contention and irrelevance.   They haven't made the playoffs since their last championship run, and pretty soon they could be running out of Eli.   So they have to use this draft to kick their championship window back open -- or failing that -- they have to think about blowing the things up and starting from scratch with new coaches and new execs.

It really is that big of a deal.   The owners aren't going to tolerate an empty Met-Life come January for much longer.    If they have another bad draft and finish below .500 they'll have high picks again, and they might want to attract new coaches and execs.

One of the reasons we're at this crossroads has been the current administrations refusal to fix the OL. For the first several years of the Coughlin era, the Giants had great continuity with their OL and they must have believed it would last forever.   It didn't.  In fact the line had slipped to average or below in 2011.   Winning the Super Bowl with that group may have given them false security.   Whatever the case they threw two day three picks at the OL in `12: Mosley and McCants.   Mosley's been hurt both seasons and been unimpressive when he's played and McCants got cut.  

Last year, they finally bit the bullet and took an OL in the first.  And voila!  They got a player.   Funny how that works.   Their two best OL picks in the Coughlin era, Snee and Pugh have all come within the first 35 picks.   It almost seems like throwing higher picks can get you better players-- wow.

Beyond the OL travesty, the current administration has also thrown too many picks at bad players. Blowing second rounders on Sintim and Austin was unthinkable, much as I like Jernigan, he's either been a bad pick or the coaches didn't realize what they had till everyone was hurt.  They've lost the old Giant touch of finding gems in rounds 4-7.  

They've also had really bad injury luck and that's not their fault, first with players losing their careers like T2 then other times with great players declining early like Nicks and JPP.     That's been a big deal.

All this amounts to a big draft for the Giants.  They'll either seize the opportunity, fix the OL and add some other talent, or they'll try to show they're smarter then everyone, make crazy picks, and then start scraping guys from the bottom of Big 10 rosters like they've done a few times lately.    Jerry Reese and especially Marc Ross need a huge draft starting tomorrow.  Here's hoping they have one.