NY Giants: Complete 2015 NFL Draft Wrap-Up and Analysis
The New York Giants came into the 2015 NFL draft with several glaring needs, including offensive line, defensive line, safety and inside linebacker.
Thanks in part to a blockbuster trade to start the second round—more on that later on in this slideshow—the Giants' allotment of eight picks was cut down to six.
Rather than devote one pick per position, they doubled up on the offensive line (first and seventh round) and safety (second and fifth round).
How did the class stack up? Let’s rewind the tape on what the Giants did—and didn’t do—and work our way toward a final grade.
The Selections
1 of 6In honor of the six draft picks chosen by the Giants this year, here are six stats and facts about the Giants' 2015 draft class. (Special thanks to Pro-Football-Reference.com for providing the complete Giants draft history.)
1. The selection of offensive tackle Ereck Flowers in the first round marks the fourth year in a row the Giants have drafted an offensive player in Round 1. Flowers joins running back Davis Wilson (2012), OT Justin Pugh (2013) and wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. (2014) as the others.
2. This year was the first since 2011 that New York did not draft at least one player from LSU. This year’s class also didn’t include a player from Syracuse for the first time since 2012. LSU, Syracuse and USC are the three college programs that have yielded the most Giants draft picks (three each) during Jerry Reese’s tenure as general manager.
3. Two new college programs made their debut on the Giants' all-time draft list under general manager Jerry Reese, who took the helm in 2007. Those include Florida State (OL Bobby Hart, R7) and UCLA (DE Owa Odighizuwa, R3).
4. The Giants' 2015 draft class ended up with the team using just six of its eight picks, the fewest number of players drafted under Reese and the fewest drafted since 2005, when the Giants had four picks.
5. The split for the Giants’ 2015 draft class saw three selections on defense (S Landon Collins, DE Owa Odighizuwa and S Mykkele Thompson) and three on offense (OT Ereck Flowers, OL Bobby Hart and WR Geremy Davis).
6. The selection of safety Landon Collins in the second round was the Giants' highest pick spent on a safety since 2008, when they used a first-round pick to select Kenny Phillips out of Miami.
Best Pick: S Landon Collins, Alabama
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When you talk about marrying value with need and then add in production, safety Landon Collins, the Giants’ second-round pick, becomes the best of the Giants’ 2015 draft picks, and it’s not even close.
Before getting into the numbers, let’s talk about last year for a minute, using some data from Pro Football Focus.
Former starting strong safety Antrel Rolle led the Giants safeties with five missed run-game tackles within eight yards of the line of scrimmage.
Although we’re talking about a different level of competition, Collins, formerly of the Crimson Tide, played against elite competition which has yielded quite a few NFL players.
Per College Football Focus (CFF), Collins missed just one tackle in 114 run snaps last season from the "up" position, making nine stops for a very impressive 7.9 run-stop percentage.
Are you concerned about whether Collins can play as a high safety or in the slot, the latter being a position that Rolle gave a solid effort to when asked but was not a role many thought he preferred?
Don’t be because, per CFF, Collins spent nearly 77 percent of his 916 snaps last season lined up either as a high safety or over a slot.
There he posted 52 tackles in coverage, tying him for second among safeties with Arizona State’s Damarious Randall and falling three short behind Oregon’s Erick Dargan.
While Collins has some work to do as he begins his transition to the pro game, the Giants' failure to land free agent Devin McCourty and to re-sign Rolle and Brown just might end up being blessings in disguise if Collins can transfer his college production to the pro level.
Grade: A
Worst Pick: S Mykkele Thompson
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If you want to talk about a head-scratcher in the Giants' 2015 draft class, look no further than their fifth-round pick, Texas defensive back Mykkele Thompson.
A jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none type, Thompson can play free safety—where Giants head coach Tom Coughlin told reporters the rookie would line up starting with next weekend’s minicamp—and the slot cornerback.
What was so unsettling about this pick was the mixed signals that came from both the player and the team.
For example, when vice president of player evaluation Marc Ross was asked if he thought the Giants could have waited for Thompson to maybe target as a free agent, Ross said, “At times we think we can get him as a free agent, but if everybody feels strongly about the player at a certain time, then we just take him.”
Then Thompson admitted that the Giants were the only team who had him in for a visit, adding, “Me thinking that I didn’t put that good of numbers up this past season, I thought free agency was going to be the main goal probably.”
So why then did the Giants decide to roll the dice on this young man, who in 52 games finished with 213 tackles but just one forced fumble, two interceptions, seven tackles for a loss and a half-sack?
“Playing-wise, he is a competitor,” Ross said. “He is really smart and they played him in a bunch of different positions. He can run. He is not your classic corner, not your classic safety, but we think he can provide versatility.”
He could probably say around same thing about any of the other players who were on the board at the time the Giants made this pick, though.
Perhaps it was Thompson’s special teams prowess—he finished with nine tackles, eight of which came in 2011, and blocked three punts in his career—that drew the Giants to him the most.
Whatever it was, the bottom line is that right now this pick looks like a classic Giants reach who has no guarantee of contributing much as a rookie.
Grade: C-
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What the Experts Are Saying
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NFL.com
Bryan Fischer of NFL.com, who gave the Giants' class a B- grade, opined that New York had a “mediocre start and ending, but the team got better with a pair of fantastic Day 2 values.”
Fischer’s opinion of the Giants’ Day 1 selection of Ereck Flowers is perhaps a bit unfair. After Washington snapped up Brandon Scherff, the Giants, who needed an offensive tackle in this draft, went with the second-best option on the board, that being Flowers.
If Flowers develops into a solid right tackle for the future and then as he gains experience becomes the team’s future left tackle, will some still think of this pick as a reach? Probably not.
As noted previously, left tackles don’t grow on trees, and with the Giants hoping to not need to draft in the top 10 again for a very long time, they grabbed a prospect who hopefully by the time his playing career is done will have addressed two key needs on the team.
As for Fischer’s comment about Day 3, while the selection of Mykkele Thompson is a head-scratcher, if the Giants get at least two solid special teams players out of those three picks to help boost the performance of a special teams unit that, per Football Outsiders, finished 15th overall last season, won’t the selections have been worth it?
SI.com
SI.com's Chris Burke and Doug Farrar gave the Giants a B- for their draft haul, the analysis being as follows:
"Big Blue's draft started out with a big thud in the minds of some when they selected Miami left tackle Ereck Flowers with the ninth pick. I had seven tackles ranked ahead of Flowers, a powerful run blocker whose pass protection leaves a lot to be desired.
Things got a bit better in the second round when the Giants took Alabama safety Landon Collins to beef up their depleted secondary. Collins is a work in progress in coverage, but he'll be an enforcer against the run early.
And getting UCLA pass-rusher Owamagbe Odighizuwa in the third round was a bit of a steal—"Double O" rushes the passer with bad intentions and a lot of power. Tom Coughlin's team grabbed another safety in the fifth round—Texas's Mykkele Thompson, who plays with range and could be a rotational asset.
"
It’s interesting to see that while the experts couldn’t come to a consensus on the Giants mock drafts, they seem to be on the same page regarding the final grade for the Giants’ class.
SB Nation
Add Dan Kadar of Mocking the Draft to the growing list of draft analysts who believe the Giants hit a home run on Day 2 but just did so-so on Days 1 and 3.
"The Giants rebounded nicely after a questionable first-round pick in Flowers. It was theft to get Collins in the second round and Odighizuwa in the third. Odighizuwa is a good system fit for the Giants and will be a player who can get after the passer and play the run.
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What those knocking the Flowers pick need to remember is that the rookie just recently turned 21 years old. While there is no disputing the fact that he needs to continue developing his craft, general manager Jerry Reese told reporters that the team views younger players as more of a positive than those who are older in age.
“They’re developing, and you can teach them as they go, grow and mature,” he said. “That’s not a negative for us.”
The problem with that thinking, though, is that sometimes the young ones just don’t mature or take a few years for the light switch to come on.
Let’s hope that won’t be the case with the Giants, who need to win this year.
What's Left to Address
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Inside Linebacker
By the start of the season, New York will have a pair of 30-year-old middle linebackers in Jon Beason and his backup, Jameel McClain (turns 30 in July).
Beason’s injury history is well-documented. He'll be the starter this year if he's healthy. If he's ready to go, how effective will he be, considering his endless string of injuries to his lower body?
McClain is the short-term answer, but he's almost 30 and will play out the final year of his contract.
Unless a hidden gem from the undrafted free agents steps up, the Giants could potentially be looking at having to restock this position next year via free agency if Beason and/or McClain aren't back.
Cornerback
The Giants are set this year with Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie and Prince Amukamara as their starters. Trumaine McBride will likely be the nickel cornerback, but beyond that, there is a drop-off in depth.
If that’s not bad enough, what happens if Amukamara—the Giants’ 2011 first-round pick who is playing out the final year of his rookie deal—doesn’t have a solid season?
And what do they do after this year for the nickel cornerback role considering the 5’9”, soon-to-be 30-year-old McBride is in the final year of his deal?
Final Grade
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If Ereck Flowers, supposedly a reach at No. 9, does nothing else this year than help improve a lousy Giants running game, the pick will have been well worth it regardless of what overall spot it came at.
After being lukewarm on the Landon Collins selection because of concerns about his being strictly a box safety and not so much a free safety—the latter being the bigger position of need—having more information come to light helps ease any concerns and in fact leads to hope that the Giants' safety position has gone from being a major weakness to a budding strength.
Defensive end Owa Odighizuwa might very well be the most underrated pick in the Giants' draft class. He will probably need a little time to refine his skills, and if his hip issues are behind him, he could become the steal of this class.
The fifth-round pick, Mykkele Thompson, is a head-scratcher. It sounded like the Giants were the only team truly interested in him, and it also sounds like Thompson, at least for the first year or so, is going to be purely a special teams player.
When you consider how the Giants got a starting outside linebacker (Devon Kennard) and are potentially set with a starting safety (Nat Berhe) in the fifth round of last year’s draft, you start to expect more out of a pick in that round.
The sixth- and seventh-round picks, receiver Geremy Davis and OG Bobby Hart respectively, are solid choices with a lot of upside.
Davis is going to help on special teams, a role he seems willing to embrace, and he could push Corey Washington off the roster if Washington doesn’t come in with a better attitude than he showed at the end of last season in a chat with Tom Rock of Newsday.
Hart is a project, but at this point, after watching Brandon Mosley, Dallas Reynolds and Eric Herman remain stuck in neutral in their respective developments, maybe it’s time for a new face in that mix.
Grade: B-
Patricia Traina covers the Giants for Inside Football, the Journal Inquirer and Sports Xchange. All quotes and information were obtained firsthand unless otherwise sourced.
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