Will the Giants Regret Passing on a QB?
The 2018 NFL season is less than a week away and with that comes another group of NFL rookies who will look to make a name for themselves the every second they step on the field. One of the teams who will be spotlighted very frequently this season will be the New York Giants headlined by their star rookie RB Saquon Barkley. The #2 overall pick in this year’s NFL Draft is one of the more dynamic players in the entire league and while he has a shot at becoming one the league’s best RBs, one question will be circling the Giant’s wagon this entire year; will the New York Giants regret passing on a QB?
I could go on and on about who the Giants drafted and who they didn’t draft but let’s make this as simple as possible- would the Giants be better off with Saquon Barkley or Sam Darnold? Saquon Barkley or Josh Rosen? Now I am as big of a Barkley fan as the next person and thought he was one of the best RBs I’ve seen come out of college in recent memory but is he talented enough to turn around the Giant’s franchise all on his own? I say no.
The New York Giants are one of those teams who have a ton of talent but for some reason were unable to win games last team. The biggest problem with their team though is the fact that their QB, Eli Manning, is 37 years old and nearing the end of his career with no real solution at backup QB who is the future of the team. Obviously Barkley will make Manning’s job a lot easier this season and will cause opposing defenses to gameplan for the dynamic rookie RB but wouldn’t the Giant’s future look just a little bit brighter with Darnold or Rosen as the backup to Manning. Most successful NFL teams build around their QBs and when teams fail to find their signal caller of the future, the consequences can be astounding. Look no future than the Cleveland Browns over the last few years.
In 2016 the Browns passed on Carson Wentz who was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles and is now one of the best young QBs in the league. The following year, Cleveland did the same thing except they passed on DeShaun Watson who was eventually drafted by the Houston Texans and was one of the most explosive QBs in the league before suffering an injury. Now they may have finally solved the QB conundrum with Baker Mayfield, but they could have fixed this twice and instead went through one of the worst stretches an NFL team can go through including a winless 0-16 season. The Browns are just one example of how passing on a QB in the top of the NFL Draft can have severe consequences but that doesn’t mean this will happen to the Giants.
If the Giants can rebound this season and Barkley is as good as advertised then this entire discussion may be a waste of time. But if the Giants miss the playoffs and manning as anything less than a good season than they may be stuck in that 15-18 range in the 2019 NFL Draft where they have to resort to mortgaging their future for a QB. So let’s circle back one last time to the main topic- will the Giants regret passing on a QB for Saquon Barkley? The short term answer is no because Manning may have 2 good years left in him and Barkley looks the part of a star RB. The long term answer may in fact be yes though because Manning is nearing the end of his career and anything less than a competitive season may result in the Giants being stuck in mediocrity for a next 2-3 years. Needless to say, the Giants are going to be one of the league’s more intriguing teams with a few stars players and a ton of media attention for the foreseeable future