The New York Giants could potentially write off the 2019 season if they can’t land Justin Herbert in the upcoming draft.
It’s looking more and more likely that this will be the final year that Eli Manning plays for the New York Giants. The team is 1-6 this season, Manning is 37, and although not all of the team’s issues have been on him, he has struggled this season.
The team is going to be towards the top of the draft, putting them in a perfect position to pick Justin Herbert, widely thought to be the only worthwhile quarterback in this class. The only problem with that plan is that he might stay in school for another year.
The quarterback class is expected to be weak this season, and without Herbert, there might not be a quarterback taking early in the draft. Should that be the case, the Giants could decide to punt on 2019 and look towards 2020, when Herbert, as well as Tua Tagovailoa, would be draft eligible, according to Matt Miller of Bleacher Report.
The team could land a player like Nick Bosa to fortify their pass rush, but Miller thinks the team will go another direction. According to a coaching source, the team will instead look to make trades to set themselves up in 2020.
“If Herbert doesn’t declare, we’ll push hard to trade back and get the extra picks in 2020 or 2021 to move up for a true franchise guy. That might mean a year of bad football, but sometimes that’s the only way to win in this league.”
Nobody wants to hear about another lost season, after winning only three games last season and winning one of the first seven this season, but the source is right. Sometimes you need to be bad in order to be good, and reaching for a quarterback that isn’t the answer to rising to mediocracy isn’t a good investment of draft capital.
Better to withstand another bad season then set yourself back five years with a large investment in a quarterback who isn’t the answer. Should Herbert not declare the front office not fall in love with another quarterback, it would mean that the quarterback situation in 2019 would be fluid.
The team could either stick with Manning, sign a veteran such as Josh McCown or Ryan Fitzpatrick to hold down the fort for a year, or give the reigns to Kyle Lauletta for a year and see if he can be the answer.
Lauletta was a fourth-round pick from a small school, as the team took a flier on him. There’s a very good chance that he won’t be the answer long-term. But if the 2019 season is going to be punted on, it makes the most sense to play the young player with presumably some upside.
