The Giants enter next week’s NFL Draft with seven picks, but the real story is the hole between them. They hold No. 37 in the second round and do not pick again until No. 105 in the fourth, a 68-pick gap that leaves Joe Schoen with a long wait and little room to maneuver.
That shortage matters because the Giants have been active buyers and sellers in recent drafts, including the move this year that sent second- and third-round picks in 2025 and a 2026 third-round pick to the Texans to jump to No. 25 and take Jaxson Dart. Schoen said earlier this week, “I would always like more picks,” and the roster math backs him up: the Giants made seven picks in 2025, six in 2024 and seven in 2023, with only one exception to the standard seven-pick haul during his tenure, when they made 11 selections in 2022.
The context is simple. The Giants are entering the draft with one pick each in the first, second, fourth and fifth rounds, plus three in the sixth. That is a thin spread for a team trying to build through volume, and it explains why trade-down calls make sense. The Giants have been talking with teams that are “sniffing around about potentially coming up,” and trading back is the clearest path to adding more selections.
The market for that kind of move has examples. The most recent fifth-pick trade came in 2012, when the Buccaneers sent the fifth pick to the Jaguars for the No. 7 pick and a fourth-rounder at No. 101. A comparable deal could send the Giants’ No. 5 pick to the Commanders for No. 7 and a third-rounder at No. 71, though Washington does not own picks in the second or fourth rounds. Another template comes from 2023, when the Lions sent the sixth pick and a third-rounder at No. 81 to the Cardinals for No. 12, No. 34 and No. 168; for the Giants, a deal along those lines would mean moving No. 5 and their fourth-round pick at No. 105.
That is the tension in front of the Giants now. They already paid up to get Dart, and the cost of that move is visible in the empty stretch between their second- and fourth-round selections. If they want more swings at the board, the answer is not complicated: they have to trade down, and the teams calling about moving up may give them the chance.
