BECK AND NO CALL
Shurmur reached out to Odell, but hasn’t heard back:
PHOENIX — Pat Shurmur isn’t going to say a bad word about Eli Manning. And he might start him all 16 Giants games this fall.
“If we’re winning games, we’re not disrupting anything. Fair?” Shurmur said at Tuesday morning’s annual NFL coaches breakfast inside the Arizona Biltmore.
But the diplomatic Giants coach isn’t going to say he doesn’t want the next franchise quarterback in the building, either. Because that wouldn’t be true.
“I think if there’s gonna be another quarterback playing for the Giants at some point, sooner better than later,” Shurmur said. “But we have things that we want to get done with our roster, we believe in Eli, and we’ll just see where it takes us.”
Of course, the Giants haven’t been winning games. So if they draft a quarterback in April and continue to lose with Manning under center? You do the math.
“Everybody’s gonna come in and compete,” the coach said. “At this point Eli’s our starter.”
Shurmur continues to preach the company line, but beneath the united front is the fact that this head coach knows quarterbacks, he is trying to build a sustainable winner in New York, and he needs a new quarterback to do it.
So there is an urgency on Shurmur’s behalf for the Giants to pick one. It is fair to say that while Gettleman will make the pick, this selection must be Shurmur’s as much as anyone’s.
It’s beginning to feel less like “if” they draft a QB in April and more like “when.”
And there is a clear path to Manning not lasting the full 2019 season as the starting quarterback if (when) they do take one. For if the Giants draft a QB in this year’s first round, it will be difficult to keep him off the field.
Two of last year’s five firstround QBs played in Week 1 (Sam Darnold, Josh Allen). And the other three all eventually became starters, too (Baker Mayfield, Josh Rosen, Lamar Jackson).
Imagine, then, that the Giants draft Ohio State’s Dwayne Haskins with the No. 6 pick or Duke’s Daniel Jones with the No. 17 choice. There will be pressure to play him early due to the investment and Manning’s declined performance.
And frankly, if that rookie is consistently demonstrating in practice that he’s ready, then Shurmur would owe it to himself and the team to put him in.
“We’ll make that judgment when we cross that bridge,” Shurmur said, non-committal. “That’s hard to predict. You can’t predict that.”
So who would be Shurmur’s quarterback in this year’s class, then?
He seems to like Haskins. The Giants took him out to dinner before his pro day. And Shurmur said Tuesday that he has “all the things you’re looking for in a quarterback.”
The Giants are definitely high on Jones. Offensive coordinator Mike Shula was at Duke’s pro day Tuesday, where Jones ran a 4.67 40-yard dash, and Jones has a visit upcoming to East Rutherford for Shurmur to study him closely faceto-face.
West Virginia’s Will Grier also is a darkhorse. They watched him play in person last season, Shurmur went to his pro day recently, and he’s a player they should be able to get with their No. 37 overall pick in the second round.
Then there the options beyond this draft.
Cardinals QB Josh Rosen should be available in a trade, for example, after Arizona coach Kliff Kingsbury continued to rave about Oklahoma QB Kyler Murray’s skills on Tuesday.
While I don’t think the Giants will go the Rosen route, if it only took a fourth-round pick to land him, the value might be too good to pass up.
There is also next year’s QB class looming: Oregon’s Justin Herbert and Georgia’s Jake Fromm as the best Giant fits, with Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa a presumed Dolphins target.
While Shurmur said the Giants have “a little of an eye” on next year’s class for context, “it doesn’t really drive our decision-making at this point.”
It shouldn’t, because he can’t afford to wait that long. Imagine, for example, if the Giants didn’t take a QB this year, went 4-12, and Shurmur had a 9-23 record through two seasons and still no quarterback of the future to develop.
It’s easy to picture, then, Shurmur banging the table in the draft room in April making his case of his preferred QB if Gettleman isn’t planning to go that route. The Giants liked Darnold as a prospect last year, for example, and needed a QB, but drafted Saquon Barkley at No. 2 anyway.
“Well there’s nobody banging the table about anything,” Shurmur insisted. “We obviously discuss everything. We know where our needs are, but we also want to look at the board. And when you’re presented with the pick, you want the best player on the board at that time. And if they do fill a need, that’s ideal.”
They have a great need at quarterback, though, and if Shurmur has conviction about one, if it takes banging the table, so be it.
“This is an important draft for us,” Shurmur said.
Correct. Put another way, it is an important draft for him.