The Giants had a good night on Thursday, at a time when they needed one like it on draft night as much as they did when Ernie Accorsi swung the deal for another Ole Miss quarterback named Eli Manning over 20 years ago.
They walked away with the guy I believe was the best player in this draft — and that means better than Two-Way Travis Hunter — when they took Abdul Carter of Penn State with the third pick. It doesn’t mean that Carter, who could wreck college football offenses all by himself, is going to be the next Lawrence Taylor, who was one of one. But always remember that the modern Giants didn’t really begin to take shape until George Young got L.T. with the second pick in 1981, two years after George drafted Phil Simms in the first round.
Of course the Giants drafted another quarterback in the first round on Thursday night when they traded up to get Jaxson Dart, Ole Miss and the Manning Passing Academy and shined-up pedigree like that. Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll did it because they had to draft a quarterback, even if the one they drafted is the second best from the weakest quarterback draft in years. Oh, sure. Cam Ward went No. 1 in Green Bay on Thursday. A year ago, he probably would have been the 7th quarterback selected.
So Dart will get his chance to be a star quarterback with the Giants someday — not next season, certainly not at the start of it, anyway, maybe not at all — the way Chuckin’ Charlie Conerly was out of Ole Miss and then Eli, who became the best Giants quarterback of them all.
I asked Archie Manning, who can walk to Vaught Hemingway Stadium in Oxford from the home he and Olivia still have there, about Dart on Friday morning.
“He’s a good kid and a smart kid and a tough kid,” Archie said. “He did well for himself at the Senior Bowl, and at the combine, and on his pro day. And to me all that matters, because it shows that the young man is able to present himself.”
Then Archie Manning added this:
“But the thing that matters as much to me as anything is that [Dart] has three years of SEC football under his belt. And that’s a lot, from a conference that had, what, 15 players drafted on Thursday night?”
So Giants fans have a right to feel great about Carter and good about this quarterback, just because they’ve been down so long it doesn’t take much to look like up. But that doesn’t change the fact that while Dart sits and watches Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston, as it’s expected he’ll do, and while Carter is chasing down pro quarterbacks the way he did in college, the circumstances for Schoen and Daboll remain the same:
The Giants have to win some games next season.
They have to win some games and put some points on the board now that they have a professional starting quarterback again in Wilson. No one is reasonably expecting them to challenge the Eagles or the Commanders in the NFC East. They might get better and still finish last again. But they have to look like a real team again, not one of the worst and dreariest in the entire sport, which is exactly what they did last season. To use a boxing analogy, the Giants at least have to get to one knee next season.
The defense doesn’t just have to be better, it has to be a lot better. And Wilson, with whatever arm and however much game he has left, really does have to put some points up on the board. Of course things got better as soon as he walked into the building, especially after what we saw the last couple of years from Daniel Jones and Drew Lock and Tommy DeVito and you fill in the rest of the names, sometimes I start to black out remembering them. Wilson has to look like the baller who got the Steelers off to that fast start last fall before the whole thing fell apart in Pittsburgh.
And if all that good stuff happens, Daboll will get the chance — unless the whole thing falls apart again at MetLife Stadium — to show he can nurture Dart the way he did that with Josh Allen. If Daboll does last through next season, and there really are no guarantees about that with him or with Schoen, let’s be real, he might still turn out to be the quarterback whisperer the Giants thought they were getting from Buffalo; and the guy who was somehow Coach of the Year with Jones as his quarterback.
Once, when Pete Rozelle called out Simms’ name on a Thursday afternoon at the Waldorf-Astoria — the draft was still a long way from becoming Cirque du Soleil — the draftniks in attendance groaned and jeered. Simms went on from there to become one of the great Giants of them all. After that George picked the wrong guy in Dave Brown and Ernie hit it out of the park with Eli and then Dave Gettleman thought he was getting his own Eli with Jones when he took him with the sixth pick.
But one of the things Accorsi loved about Eli Manning was the way he stood in there against SEC competition even when the sides didn’t look even, and even though the SEC in those years wasn’t the monster it’s turned into. It doesn’t mean this new Ole Miss quarterback is going to be anything near what Eli became for the Giants. But you can see why the Schoen and Daboll liked him and why, in the end, they liked him a whole lot more than they did Deion’s kid.
For the time being, though, Giants fans will take the win. Lord knows they can use one.
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