Dan Graziano, senior NFL national reporter 8y

Mel Kiper Jr. gives the Giants' draft a B-plus, but concerns linger

Is it possible to like all of the players a team picked but not totally love its draft? Because I think that's kind of where I am with the New York Giants' 2016 draft a day later.

Mel Kiper Jr. gives the Giants a B-plus in his annual post-draft grades, rating only eight teams ahead of them. And his analysis, if you read it, is based on the idea that they came away with six very good players, several at positions of strong value Saturday. I don't disagree with this. I think Sterling Shepard in the second round is a great pick and Paul Perkins in the fifth could look like a fantastic one once they get their running-back logjam sorted out. I don't know as much about Darian Thompson, B.J. Goodson or Jerell Adams, but Mel seems to like them all, and Todd McShay rates Goodson as the best pick the Giants made this year. Those guys spend their lives on this stuff and know these players. If they like them this much, then as a Giants fan you can feel good about the guys they got.

My nitpick with the draft is that there were no big fat guys in it. For the first time in Giants history, they went through an entire draft without taking an offensive lineman or a defensive lineman. When it was over, GM Jerry Reese, coach Ben McAdoo and scouting director Marc Ross all seemed legitimately surprised to hear that.

"That's probably pretty unique," McAdoo said. "But the last thing you want to do is reach down and reach for a guy. That's just how it went this year. I think we did a nice job of not having any knee-jerk reactions."

That is true, but it speaks to a stylistic choice the Giants make during the draft. There were 25 trades made during this year's draft involving 25 teams. The Giants were one of the seven teams that didn't make any trades. They just sat tight at each of their six picks and took the top-ranked guy on their board at each one of them. They didn't stop to think, "Wait, we really do need to add a developmental offensive lineman to this mix." And that's fine, if that's the way you want to handle it. They come out of the draft liking all six players they got and not bogging themselves down with, "Well, could we have got him later and added a pick or two?"

Add in the facts that they spent gobs of money on their defensive line in free agency this year and spent top-40 picks on offensive linemen in each of their previous three drafts, and you can make the case that they can afford a year off from fat guys. I get it all. I do. I just personally feel as if they're not all the way there yet, long-term, on either line and that it's a mistake to ignore those vital positions even for one draft.

We will see, of course. I'm not banging on this Giants draft. They needed help in a lot of areas, and it looks to me as if they got it. If four or more of these six guys become good players in the NFL, this will look like a fantastic draft. It's just worth wondering whether there was a way to juggle the picks they had in order to address more areas than they did -- and whether they'll end up regretting not taking a lineman at some point down the road.

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