Giants Draft: Review Pt. 12 The Ringer

First rounders get the most ink.   For years I have told you about "ringers" particularly as they pertain to the baseball and hockey drafts, but they are also possible in football and hoops.   And in the case of OBJ, the Giants got one.    A ringer is a player who arrives at a team that has some sort of prior relationship with the player.  For example, though he's gone now, Robinson Cano's Dad had been a Yankee draft pick years ago, and they knew about him from birth.  And then every year you see the Yanks draft players who were on their area scouts travel teams, or who were somehow at the complex for months at a time.  Mason Williams was a kid like that.  They drafted Mason after he'd been hanging around for a year.  It's just these closer than you'd think relationships that often bring good players to franchises.

Odell is this kind of player for the Giants.   Eli Manning actually picked him before they did.   By now everyone knows the story of Eli Manning calling his old high school for WR's when he was in town for the summer back when Odell was a junior in HS.  Well, Odell came out and was already advanced.  Eli even taught him some Giant routes.  And that Manning Passing Academy that's become so branded and that they run every year for the best talent in college football is a virtual ringer factory for the Manning brothers and it's becoming clear that they've used it to find some guys who have miraculously become their teammates.   Odell is the latest.  And Eli has been scouting him since he was 16.

Another thing, and this might not be the last thing I say about Odell, is that the Giants never get guys like this.   Well, almost never.  It's partly because they almost never draft in the top half of the draft.   It's also because when they do have super high picks like in `97 the top guys aren't quite in the OBJ class.  For years the Giants have coveted guys like Joey Galloway, Santana Moss and Andre Johnson on draft day but couldn't get up their to get them.  They loved Revis, but had to settle for Aaron Ross because they were picking too late.  It a big deal for the Giants to get an elite offensive playmaker, and they finally did this time.  And this is really going to be fun for all of us.