New York Giants: Draft might not be best option for new QB – Part 1
By Ed Stein
When the clock starts Thursday night, April 25 at 8 pm, in Nashville, all the identifying, scouting, and analyzing will be over. There are three or four quarterbacks predicted to go in this year’s first round (depending on whose mock draft you believe). I’m not sure how well any of them work for Big Blue.
Dwayne Haskins, Ohio State, 6-2, 220 pounds
Dwayne Haskins is projected to go to the New York Giants with the sixth overall pick on many mock draft boards. I admit of all the quarterbacks in this year’s draft, he has the most upside. He has arm strength, accuracy and won all but one game he appeared in at Ohio State. That doesn’t mean there are no doubts.
Biggest of all, he has a serious lack of experience at the collegiate level. He was very good in his 22 games at OSU. Aside from a mop-up against UNLV in September of 2017, Haskins never threw more than eight passes in an NCAA game until Opening Day 2018.
The NFL game is so much faster than the college one. It concerns me that unless the Giants plan to sit Haskins in 2019, his adjustment curve will be too steep for him to be successful. 20 or so years ago, that wouldn’t have been a problem. Haskins would learn from watching Manning and wait for his time to come. In today’s NFL, quarterbacks get thrown into the fire quickly.
Drew Lock, Missouri, 6-4, 225 pounds
He is built like a prototype NFL quarterback. Drew Lock has a strong arm and plenty of experience as a four year player at Mizzou. Aside from John Elway‘s enthusiastic comments (remember he drafted Tim Tebow), there are lots of knocks on Lock.
For lack of a better term, he is the Bo Callahan of this draft (see the movie Draft Day). Drew Lock isn’t exactly a popular guy. Additionally, I don’t think he showed enough improvement between his junior and senior seasons. It seems as though he never lived up to his potential in college.