By knocking off the Colts 45-33 — which knocks Indianapolis out of playoff contention — the Giants have knocked themselves out of contention from landing either Shedeur Sanders or Cam Ward in the 2025 draft, unless they pull off the same kind of trade they worked in 2004, when they acquired Eli Manning from the Chargers in exchange for, among other things, their first-round selection in 2005.
(In 2003, every NFL team won at least four games, the only time in NFL history that this has happened, as the Chargers, Giants, Raiders, and Cardinals all finished 4-12.)
Perhaps the result shouldn't have been seen as such a big surprise, considering the fact that the Colts entered the game with a 17-31 record outdoors dating back to 2017.
The Pyrrhic victory over Indy caused the Giants to drop from first to fourth in the 2025 draft order, with one week remaining, due to the NFL's controversial (or at least it should be, anyway) "strength of schedule" tiebreaker, which doubly penalizes a team for having played a tough schedule.
Why not use head-to-head results as the first tiebreaker — provided that every one of the tied teams had at least one opportunity to have played one or more of the others?
In that case, the Giants and Titans went 1-0 among the four tied teams, the Browns and Patriots 0-1.
The second tiebreaker can be record against common opponents: New England and Cleveland were both 1-4 in common games.
The third step can be strength of victory — not strength of schedule — giving the Patriots the top pick based on their .333 strength of victory vs. the Browns' .521 (Cleveland split with both Baltimore and Pittsburgh — both playoff teams).
With the Pats thus awarded the #1 pick, it then becomes a three-way tie among the Browns, Giants, and Titans — and since Tennessee did not play either the Giants or the Browns, head-to-head cannot be applied; and the three teams did not play enough common games (minimum of four) for that to apply either.
So strength of victory must be used to determine the second, third, and fourth picks — with the Giants getting the #2 pick with their .396 strength of victory over Tennessee's .417 and, as noted previously, Cleveland's .521.
Therefore, after the Patriots presumably trade down with a team that wants Sanders (and reap a huge windfall in so doing), that would leave Ward for the Giants.
After that, there is such a huge break at the quarterback position from Sanders and Ward to the rest of the 2025 quarterback draft class that it is highly likely that the third quarterback to be selected will not hear his name called until the second round — if even then (this, of course, assumes that one of the other quarterbacks doesn't pull off a "freak show" at the combine, the way Anthony Richardson did at the 2023 combine).
Of course, if the NFL had a draft lottery, the Giants' win over the Colts would not have been so costly.
Yet the NFL owners aren't even considering the possibility of a draft lottery — the way they are trying to persuade the NFLPA to tear up their existing contract so that an 18th game can be added to the regular season schedule.
For a league that has purported to stand for "fairness" for literally decades, the strength-of-schedule tiebreaker to determine the draft order seems monumentally hypocritical.
Drew Lock could be getting his third chance at catching on after stints with first the Broncos, then the Seahawks — and now the Giants.
If he doesn't make it this time around, the dreaded "journeyman" label will be permanently appended to him.
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