When the New York Giants hired Dave Gettleman to be their general manager, he vowed to fix the offensive line, which had not been good since the 2011 Super Bowl season.
Yet when faced with the opportunity to do so in 2018, his first draft in charge of the Giants, Gettleman famously fell in full-bloom love with Penn State running back Saquon Barkley to the point where months before the Giants selected Barkley with the No. 2 overall pick in the draft not only did everyone know that was going to be the team’s pick, but Gettleman reportedly refused to entertain offers to trade down for additional assets that might have otherwise helped the team rebuild after a 3-13 season the year prior.
So claims SNY’s Conor Hughes, who at the time was covering the New York Jets, recalled a conversation with then-Jets general manager Mike Maccagnan.
“I remember talking to [former New York Jets General Manager] Mike Maccagnan about this because you remember the Jets were drafting third,” Hughes said during a guest appearance on WFAN last Friday.
“I’m like, ‘Dude, weren’t you nervous that the Browns and Giants were going to go quarterback-quarterback?’ And suddenly, you’re landing the number three, which would have been [quarterback] Josh Rosen because after drafting Christian Hackenberg, they weren’t going to go with a project like Josh Allen again. He goes, ‘No, because we had our sources that said the Giants were so locked in on Barkley at number two.’
“He goes, ‘I wasn’t worried until the morning of the draft happened, and we got word that it wasn’t Sam going one, that Baker [Mayfield] was going one.’ They thought they were getting Baker at three. They had Sam [Darnold] as their number one quarterback but thought they were getting Baker at three.
“He told me that the only time he got worried was that morning because he knew the only person who loved Sam more than him was John Elway with the Broncos, and he was petrified that John was going to call the Giants and offer the house for No. 2 in order to get Sam Darnold.”
Hughes said that Maccagnan found out that Elway and the Broncos did attempt to engineer a trade up to the No. 2 spot but that Gettleman, who famously said Barkley was a “gold jacket” (Hall of Fame) type of running back in the making, wouldn’t take any calls or budget off taking Barkley second overall.
“[Maccagnan] told me he saw John [Elway] and said to him, ‘I was surprised you didn’t do that. I really thought you were trying to jump us,’ and they did, but Dave [Gettleman] wouldn’t answer the phone,” Hughes said.
“Dave was so locked in on No. 2 that he wouldn’t answer the phone. So, when Dave said in his press conference they didn’t need to even take calls, they ran it up to get Barkley — he was not lying.”
Barkley went on to have a solid rookie campaign for the Giants, winning Offensive Rookie of the Year honors. But since then, he’s yet to replicate the production he had that first season, largely due to a string of lower body injuries that include a torn ACL.
Had the Giants traded down, they might have had a chance at getting offensive lineman Quenton Nelson, who went to the Colts at No. 6 and became a Pro Bowler for them. Meanwhile, in that 2018 season, as Barkley was running wild, quarterback Eli Manning was sacked 47 times, a single-season career high, with the Giants finishing 5-11 on the year.
Barkley is currently at a crossroads regarding his future with the team. Although he has repeatedly said he’d like to be a Giant for life, last year, he and the team could not strike a long-term deal to ensure him of that desire.
This off-season, Barkley is again facing the potential of being slapped with the franchise tag, except this time, the Giants, under new general manager Joe Schoen, might not be as willing as they were last year to carry the running back on the roster at a little more than $12 million if a multiyear can’t be worked out.
The Giants, meanwhile, continue to struggle in fielding a competent offensive line, with left tackle Andrew Thomas being their lone proven starter on a unit that last year allowed 85 sacks last season, the second most in NFL history since sacks became a tracked statistic.
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