The Giants were on the clock, and there was rampant speculation they would take a defensive player — most likely pass-rusher Josh Allen — when it was time to make the selection with the No. 6 pick in the NFL draft.
This was a huge decision for the entire franchise, but defensive coordinator James Bettcher said Wednesday, “The emotion really gets taken out of it at that point in time.”
Based on his conversations with general manager Dave Gettleman in the weeks and days leading up to the draft, Bettcher already knew where the Giants were headed: toward quarterback Daniel Jones at that spot, and not a defensive player.
“I’m really excited about the guy we brought in at six,” Bettcher said. “If you want to ask me, ‘Would you have loved to have Josh Allen or [defensive tackle] Ed Oliver’ — I think if you lined up 32 coordinators and however many hundreds of coordinators who have ever coordinated in the National Football League on defense, and you said, ‘Hey, you get picks one through five in the draft and you get to draft whoever you want,’ I got a pretty good feeling they’d take all defensive players.”
As it turned out, the Giants used seven of their 10 draft picks on defensive players. But not the first one. Not with the marquee pick. And so, Bettcher watched as Allen went to the Jaguars with the No. 7 overall pick and Oliver went to the Bills at No. 9.
“You can’t talk about team and not be about team,” Bettcher said. “You can’t talk about building culture and not be about it. You can’t talk about to your players as a coach and not live that life, right? Whoever we have here we are excited to have. And that’s not company line, that’s personal opinion.”
Any residual sting not getting Allen or Oliver was felt before the draft arrived.
“Dave Gettleman does a great job, and it does not happen everywhere, that through the process he wants to hear your opinion,” Bettcher said. “He cares about what coaches’ opinions are, he wants to hear your evaluation and what the plan is for him and how you’re gonna use guys. Those decisions in terms of hearing my voice, that’s not draft night, we’ve had those conversations. You know when you get to draft night because you’ve been through it. Before you know, whoever we pick, he’s our guy, whether it’s an offensive guy or defensive guy, so the emotion really gets taken out of it at that point in time.”
Bettcher went on to rave about getting defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence and cornerback DeAndre Baker later in the first round.
“We brought in talented, young, ascending young players,” Bettcher said.
At the start of the entire draft experience, the Giants selected Jones, who as a rookie will sit and learn from Eli Manning. Bettcher got a chance to see Jones up close at last week’s rookie mini-camp, got to see what the Giants were so taken with, what the Giants ultimately valued ahead of the defensive players left on the board whom they bypassed at No. 6.
“A guy that was decisive with where he wanted to go with the ball, a guy who took great command,” Bettcher said of Jones. “There wasn’t a moment where, things get a little hairy on defense because there’s a lot of young guys learning new things, so there will be defensive looks he’s dealing with that aren’t real defensive looks. You never saw the guy get flustered, you saw him play with poise. I’ve been some places where we’ve had some pretty good quarterbacks, between Indy and Arizona and here, and you see a guy who’s in that mold.”
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