Giants Draft: Review Pt. 5 Brands or Players?

The draft has become bigger and bigger business.  While it was once the province of teams and the original draftniks, it's become a major TV event, and everyone wants in.   The internet has really helped peoples awareness of certain prospects, but not necessarily all prospects.  Look at Victor Cruz who was undrafted just a few years ago and is now one of the best wr's in football.   Thus the internet ain't perfect, nor are NFL scouts and execs.  They miss guys.  But NFL teams are a little less likely to miss guys than the average fan.  That's because they have a lot more than just the internet to keep them posted on players.

That was what was so weird about Friday night.  The Giants, who have missed a total of once on a DL draft pick since the second round of the 2003 Draft picked a 21 year old, pass rushing Defensive Tackle from Syracuse, who showed a Giant Type quick first step on tape and had 10 sacks, 14 1/2 TFL's and 43 other tackles.

In other words, a really pretty typical Giants DL pick.   And it almost broke the internet.   The crux of why people were so mad was that they didn't know enough about him or hadn't seen him projected as high as the 3rd round.  In other words, he was not a strong enough brand.   Other people were mad that the Giants didn't hit OL again, but during the third round I didn't think there was anyone I really wanted on the OL, and I still felt Chris Watt would be available Saturday, which he wasn't.  Louis Nix was also available and was certainly a bigger brand, but he was also more of a 1 tech and had battled weight and effort issues during his career at ND.

Even people who were thrilled with the first two picks, made by the same people who picked Jay Bromley in the somewhat barren third, thought it was a blown pick and it's really because they weren't in any sense prepared for it.   Sort of like the Jay Alford pick back in 2007 and he was going really well till he got hurt.

Anyway, it was revealing as to how passionate people are during the draft -- and how irrational.  As a Giant fan, I think their default setting should be "when in doubt draft a pass rusher."  Now I'm not saying the Giants were in doubt, but I do think they were in a bit of no man's land.

I think the presumptive first three rounds of the draft turned into just two rounds.   That is, the league saw the second round very differently from the media and guys who had been projected to go in the third went in the second.  Some guys who were projected to go in the 4th went in the third,  And some guys who were projected to go in the second were scattered through the , 3rd, 4th and 5th.  That's what happened.  The media was way off on the middle of the draft.

And because of that fans felt teams were making the mistakes, when all these mock draft ever seek to do is guess what the teams will do.   They were wrong, so far we do not know if the teams were.  

If Jay Bromley becomes a reliable member of our DL rotation and we can once again generate a pass rush from the front 4 he will have been a great pick.   Btw, he actually is an upside pick because he is just 21 and didn't come to football until late and having lived a nightmare.   He was immediately good at the game, so that indicates instincts.    We'll see if he can contribute, but it was not a particularly odd pick but the reaction sure was.