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New Giants general manager Dave Gettleman finds himself in an interesting situation in New York. He inherits a team with a 37-year-old Eli Manning who likely doesn’t have too many years left in the tank. He’s also armed with the No. 2 pick in this year’s draft which he could go use to select one of the highly-touted draft prospects in this year’s class.
Gettleman has already gone on record by saying the team will take the best player available with that pick, which could be a QB. However, he did point out the dangers of selecting a quarterback just for the sake of it.
“If you take a guy just to take a guy, especially at the quarterback position, and he fails, you set yourself back five years,” Gettleman said per Dan Duggan of NJ.com. “You set yourself back five years because there are teams that are in what I call quarterback hell. They've got quality defense, they've got a good special teams, and they're going 7-9, 8-8, 9-7. And now if there is a legitimate guy, they've got to trade up and give away the farm to get the guy.”
Gettleman makes the obvious point that picking the wrong quarterback will set a team back for a significant amount of time. But that’s just the way life goes in the NFL these days. It’s incredibly difficult to win without a competent player behind center. That’s why it’s so important to find the right one.
But as the Cleveland Browns know all too well, it can also be incredibly difficult to find that right one. In order to find that guy, teams inherently need to take that risk in the draft, which can be a lottery at times.
While Dave Gettleman preaches caution about taking a QB for the sake of it, he will have to find the successor to Manning sooner rather than later. Even though there is a chance that the Giants fall into “quarterback hell,” he'll have to take it since finding that next QB is a crucial path to success in his tenure with the Giants.
