The Giants' 2025 draft: Good players, wrong time
Photo courtesy of All-Pro Reels / Wikimedia Commons
Despite landing a haul of talented prospects, the Giants’ 2025 NFL Draft left fans and analysts questioning whether New York truly moved the needle—or just spun their wheels with picks that failed to meet immediate needs.
The 2025 National Football League (NFL) draft took place Thursday to Saturday, from Apr. 24 to Apr. 26. The seven-round draft is a very important night for many franchises. Teams that struggled the year before tend to have a higher pick in the draft, and this is where most of the franchise players are selected. One team that had a top overall selection was the New York Giants. The Giants' selections from this past event are universally praised. With that being said, it is apparent that fans look deeper into the franchise and how selections move the franchise toward a more successful direction.
To get started, narrowing down the true keys to a successful draft is essential. When you have a pick as high as the Giants did at third overall, it is unlikely that a team will draft an untalented player. Since this is the case, the key to making a good selection this high in the draft is to not only draft a top talent but also draft a player who immediately makes a massive impact on your franchise and can be heavily factored into the future success of your team. This is the problem with the Giants' third overall selection.
Abdul Carter, out of Penn State, is not a bad player by any means, but so were a handful of the other players available when the Giants were on the clock. When evaluating the Giants' roster, it is pretty obvious that the Giants need offensive linemen, offensive playmakers, and defensive secondary talents. The one position the Giants were already above average in compared to the rest of the league was defensive linemen and pass rushers. The Giants already had all-pro talents on their roster heading into the draft, including pass rushers Kayvon Thibodeaux and Brian Burns, along with defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence.
Carter is an excellent player who has a lot to offer, but does he alter the franchise's success as much as the third overall pick should? The Giants will have one of the best pass rushing teams in all of the NFL, but they already had that last year, and it didn’t bring them much success. The Giants eventually made a huge splash later in the first round when they traded up to get pick 25 to draft Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart. This pick was also head-scratching from a rooster-structure standpoint.
Dart is quite possibly not going to start a single game this season. The Giants signed two quarterbacks in the offseason, Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston; both are veterans who have proven they can win games. It is not uncommon for a rookie quarterback to sit his rookie season behind a veteran to help learn how to operate at an NFL level, but in the Giants' case: why wouldn’t they just wait until next year? The Giants are going to have a top pick again next year, as the franchise did not make enough big moves to suggest they wouldn’t be picking in the top ten again next year.
The 2026 NFL draft pool is loaded with quarterback talent, so why would the Giants not spend all of next year doing their research to draft their favorite top ten quarterback talent in 2026? The Giants drafting what looks to be their franchise quarterback in the back end of the first round when they are not desperate to find a starter for this year is indicative of the franchise’s inability to strategically win on draft night.
The Giants continued to make interesting picks in the later rounds of the draft. The team selected defensive tackle Darius Alexander out of Toledo with the sixty-fifth pick. This was done when they already had an all-pro defensive tackle in Dexter Lawrence. The Giants finally addressed their notably bad offensive line in the fifth round when they selected offensive guard Marcus Mbow out of Purdue too late to address a position the Giants haven’t been able to fix in almost a decade. The Giants did make an awesome pick in the fourth round when they drafted Arizona State running back Cam Skattebo at one-hundred-and-fifth overall— a talented offensive playmaker who can immediately help a very weak offense.
The problem with the Giants' 2025 draft choices was never the talent in question. Abdul Cater, Jaxson Dart, Darius Alexander, Cam Skattebo, and Marcus Mbow are all talented players, but they do not make the Giants much better for this upcoming season. These picks could possibly shape out into being important selections to address certain positions, however, that would likely mean the Giants are preparing for certain players to leave in next year’s free agency, which is the last thing a team like the New York Giants need.