Giants 7-Round Mock Draft 3.0: Major Trade Shakes Things Up

With the calendar now flipped to April, that means the 2024 NFL Draft is within a few weeks from being held in the heart of Detroit, Michigan. It also means “smokescreen season” is alive and well across the entire league and some of those have had big implications on the Giants’ potential moves starting at No. 6 overall. 

There have been reports of the Giants’ scheduling personal time with a handful of the top prospects, particularly at the quarterback position. In addition, much noise has been made about teams like Minnesota trying to leap frog New York to steal one of the top four arms off the board. 

The Giants have a lot of pressure on their shoulders to fill the important holes on their roster and little draft capital to work with. Expect the team to be working on potential trade partners as the possibility of needing to do is there and suitors are opening their phone lines, but there is also more than one way to get things done for Big Blue. 

4th Overall Pick (via trade) - J.J. McCarthy, Quarterback

I know what you are thinking—the New York Giants trading up the draft board to pursue the next potential quarterback of their future?? Yes, it could happen and the only player they would have in mind when doing it is Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy. 

It is widely expected that the first three picks of the draft will all be quarterbacks, with Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye finding homes in Chicago, Washington and New England. The draft really begins at No. 4 with the Arizona Cardinals, whom the Giants could seek a trade with to move up two spots and secure their piece once the Daniel Jones experiment runs its course next season. 

The Giants would send Arizona the No. 6 selection and a fourth rounder for 2025, but this all stems back to recent comments made by John Mara at the NFL owners meetings. He said he would back Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll should they have a conviction on a quarterback and many believe their belief is there with McCarthy as his stock has risen from reach to a prospect top-10. 

The Giants have also done everything to show their admiration for the National Championship winning gunslinger, ranging from attending his Pro Day to scheduling individual meetings with him to pick his brain. Sure, this could all be part of the smoke that comes with the drama in the lead up to the draft, but it’s a move that doesn’t seem out of the picture for New York who needs its staple piece with the uncertainty surrounding Daniel Jones and his injury history. 

Learning from one of the greatest coaches at both the collegiate and pro level in Jim Harbaugh, McCarthy is certainly a teachable prospect that has a bunch of different athletic intangibles to bring to the Giants offense. His resume features an impressive campaign from 2023, when he completed a career-high 240 passes for 2,991 yards, 22 touchdowns and only four interceptions and averaged 9.0 yards per attempt.