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Associated Press
17-04-2025
- Sport
- Associated Press
Giants pick No. 3 in NFL draft and it could come down to an edge rusher, versatile playmaker or QB
Joe Schoen knows what many are thinking about the New York Giants heading into the NFL draft. With the No. 3 overall pick, they have a chance to select a franchise-changing player — and it might even be a quarterback. Sure, the Giants signed Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston as free agents this offseason to give them a pair of veteran signal callers for the short-term as New York tries to bounce back from a miserable 3-14 season that put Schoen and coach Brian Daboll squarely on the hot seat. Miami's Cam Ward figures to be taken in the first two picks, if not No. 1 overall by Tennessee. But if Colorado's Shedeur Sanders is available when the Giants go on the clock, will they resist the urge to add a potential long-term answer at the quarterback position? 'I think we put ourselves in a position where I don't think it's mandatory or something with our feet to the fire, that we have to do,' Shoen said Wednesday during the team's pre-draft news conference. 'I think the two guys we signed have played a lot of ball. They've got a lot of skins on the wall. I do think we've upgraded that room compared to where it was a year ago.' That means the Giants have options. Cornerback-wide receiver Travis Hunter, Shedeur's versatile Heisman Trophy-winning Buffaloes teammate, could be in play and potentially add an athletic presence — to the defense and offense. Penn State edge rusher Abdul Carter, also expected to be taken in the first few picks, would add an explosive playmaker to Shane Bowen's defense. QB or not QB at No. 3? Well, that's the intriguing decision Schoen could face early in this draft. Need The Giants' quarterback of the future isn't on the roster, although No. 3 QB Tommy DeVito was re-signed in the offseason as an exclusive rights free agent. New York could also use O-line depth and another playmaking wide receiver to help Malik Nabers. Don't need The Giants' strength is its defensive line, led by Dexter Lawrence, but that won't preclude Schoen from adding another pass rusher to pair with Kayvon Thibodeaux and Brian Burns or an interior D-lineman to complement Lawrence. The free agent signings of cornerback Paulson Adebo and safety Jevon Holland make the secondary less of a priority. Giant deal? Buzz about the Giants potentially trading up to No. 1 to take Ward lost steam in recent weeks. But Schoen could still be in the market to move down from No. 3 and collect a haul of picks in return. Also something to watch: New York has the 34th pick — the second selection of the second round. Even if they stay put at No. 3, the Giants might have an opportunity to use that high second-rounder to move back into the first round if someone at the top of their draft board is still available as the bottom half of the opening round unfolds. 'We'll be open to all options,' Schoen said. Taking another pass The Giants could target their quarterback with their second-rounder or if they swing a deal to get back into the first round. That scenario would certainly seem to be in play if Sanders slides. Otherwise, New York could look to Mississippi's Jaxson Dart, Louisville's Tyler Shough or Alabama's Jalen Milroe as players who could sit for at least a year before potentially needing to play meaningful snaps. Double trouble Like several teams, the Giants are looking at whether Hunter can truly be a two-way player. If New York takes him, Hunter could help the receiving group and take some of the attention off Nabers. He could also add depth at cornerback and perhaps push Deonte Banks, the Giants' 2023 first-rounder, for a starting role. Schoen said this week the Giants are open to allowing Hunter to play on both sides of the ball. 'This guy can do it all,' Schoen said. 'Also, he's a great kid. It would be hard to keep him off the field. He's motivated to play both ways.' Third time's a charm If the Giants stay at No. 3, it'll mark just the third time in franchise history they've picked in that spot. Offensive lineman John Hicks was the first in 1974 and linebacker Carl Banks in 1984 was the last. ___ AP NFL:
New York Times
14-02-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Robbie Ray is one of the wildest wild cards in the Giants' wild-card quest
Before the 2021 season, I wrote an article titled 'The Giants' postseason hopes are tied to a boom-or-bust rotation.' It discussed the low floors and high ceilings of the pitchers the San Francisco Giants had assembled, from Aaron Sanchez and Johnny Cueto to Kevin Gausman and Alex Wood. Logan Webb got a mention in the same paragraph as Travis Blackley. The point was to show that the Giants had a low-floor, high-ceiling rotation, and they'd need to hit that high ceiling if they were going to contend. Advertisement There weren't that many people yelling about the idea that they even had a chance at the postseason, but I'm sure '[Comment removed for violating Code of Conduct]' was doing a lot of work. You know what happened after that: The Giants took that boom-or-bust rotation and boomed their way to a division title, setting franchise records along the way. This isn't to take a weird victory lap several years later. One of the first columns I wrote for The Athletic in 2019 was titled 'The Giants rotation is set, and it's impossible to predict how it will fare.' Turns out it wasn't really impossible. The rotation looked kind of janky, and it ended up being kind of janky. Madison Bumgarner made 34 starts and a lot of money that offseason, but Jeff Samardzija actually had the best season. After that there were a lot — and I mean a lot — of ERAs over 5.00. Everything new is old again. The Giants have done it again, building an entire rotation out of inscrutable test cases and unpredictable pitchers. Even the steadiest of them all, the Opening Day starter and fan favorite, is tricky to analyze after last season. The Giants' projected five starters are all so unusual, in their own ways, that each deserves a boom-or-bust profile. We'll start with the pitcher who gives off more 2021 vibes than the other four combined: Robbie Ray. Ray doesn't give off 2021 vibes because that's the season he won the Cy Young Award. He gives them off because that's the year the Giants were relying on notable pitchers coming off injury-shortened seasons. Some of them ended up being very effective (Anthony DeSclafani, Wood), and some of them were ineffective (Aaron Sanchez, Scott Kazmir). The 2021 Giants couldn't have done anything without some of them succeeding. The 2025 Giants will probably need Ray to be good if they're going to do anything. Advertisement It could happen. Ray made seven starts with the Giants before he was shut down with a hamstring injury, and they were a mixed bag. In his first start back, he carved up the Dodgers for five no-hit innings, striking out nine. Less than a month later, he threw 39 pitches and got two outs in a disaster outing against the Braves. There was also a dominant start against the White Sox mixed in, but everyone reading this had a dominant start against the White Sox last season. Some of you had two. The high points were high, though. Let's look at starting pitchers with at least 30 innings last year, a cutoff that Ray barely squeaks over. Here are the pitchers with the highest percentage of swings and misses when batters offered at one of their pitches: 1. Blake Snell, 64.1 percent contact rate 2. Robbie Ray, 66.2 3. Grant Holmes, 68.6 4. (t) Dylan Cease, 69.3 4. (t) Garrett Crochet, 69.3 The pitchers just out of the top five were also very successful, whether during the season (Chris Sale, Cy Young Award winner) or offseason (Matthew Boyd). It's hard to fake that kind of whiff rate, as it's one of the fastest stats to stabilize. A larger sample size might have brought it down, but not by much. Note some of the pitchers who weren't in the top 20. Paul Skenes was 29th. Corbin Burnes was 35th. Shohei Ohtani didn't even record a single swing-and-miss as a pitcher last year, which makes you think. The hamstring injury might be the only reason Ray is still on the Giants. His last start was Aug. 25, which means he probably would have had five or six starts remaining if he had stayed healthy. If he had a similar strikeout rate over those starts, he might have felt comfortable opting out of the two years and $50 million he had left on his contract. Consider that Boyd, a year older and without anything close to the same kind of career success as Ray, got two years and $29 million. Pitching ain't cheap. Advertisement It's the whiff rate that has the projections optimistic. ZiPS has him pitching only 108 and three-thirds innings*, but others have him throwing more, and all of them have him being reasonably effective. You have to be a serious grump to think he doesn't belong in the middle of a major-league rotation this season. If he can keep missing bats like he did in his first seven Giants starts, there's an argument for him to be toward the top of even a contender's rotation. * I know. Yell at Dan Szymborski and his computers, not me. Those are the reasons for optimism. The reasons for pessimism are easy to list and impossible to ignore: He's pitched 34 innings over the past two seasons because of a serious arm injury, and now he's 33, a full three years removed from his Cy Young season. You can predict effectiveness when he's on the mound, but you can't predict how often he'll be on the mound. Pitchers come back and thrive after Tommy John surgery all the time — Justin Verlander did it when he was 39 — but it's not just the elbow that they have to worry about. The hamstring injury was a reminder that every part of Ray's kinetic chain is suspect until there's evidence that it isn't. A full season can be problematic for the hips, shoulders, backs and legs of 33-year-old pitchers who didn't miss most of the previous two seasons. That might be overly dramatic, but if you look through the super-handy Tommy John Surgery Database, you'll see 2,550 names (and counting), but only about 6 percent of those pitchers were Ray's age or older*. There's no point in listing all of those pitchers who were successful again. Some of them were, some of them weren't, and one of them won the NL Cy Young Award just last year. * One of them was a guy named Tommy John. Boy, what were the odds that he had to have the surgery? The Sale example is helpful here, and not just as a best-case scenario. When he returned from a lengthy absence following his surgery, he got just a little time on the mound in July 2022, then had to be shut down again. In the following season, he wasn't a Cy Young pitcher, but he was solid: He made 20 starts with a 4.30 ERA (106 ERA+), and he pitched 102 innings. That's roughly what Ray's projections are, albeit with about 10 to 30 fewer innings. There's always the freakish surgery-return season from Verlander to point to, but that's an obvious outlier that won't be topped until the nanobots are duct-taping ligaments back together in real-time. It might take another year to get the full Ray experience, if it's even still in there. We really don't know. Advertisement We do know, though, that Ray looked pretty darned good at times during his return. Good enough to shut down the Dodgers in his first game as a Giant, even. Now that the offseason is mostly over, it seems pretty clear that if the Giants are paying more than the market value for him, it's not by much, and they should feel lucky to have him. The difference between a stepping-stone season and an award-consideration season could be a major difference in how interesting the entire team is. Err on the side of caution, but keep a little cubby hole free for a speck of optimism. Sometimes pitchers boom, and sometimes they bust. The Giants have seen both from pitchers with a resume far less impressive than Ray's.
