The Giants are young across the roster, and that could make general manager Joe Schoen restless when the NFL draft begins Thursday night.
After drafting 11 players in 2022, Schoen is armed with another 10 picks over seven rounds thanks to two compensatory picks added for free-agency departures and two picks added through past trades (one before his arrival).
It sounds like an advantage for building a cost-controlled roster when “there are players making a pretty good chunk of money on our team and some contracts on the horizon potentially,” Schoen said, but a case of too much youth might force the Giants into the trade market.
The Giants devoted an NFL-high 18,302 snaps to players age 25 or younger last season, while the Steelers (16,451) ranked a distant No. 2, according to Sharp Football Analysis.
Adding 10 more rookies could mean later committing 39.6 percent of a 53-man roster (or 30.4 percent of a full roster if willing to risk passing a draft pick through waivers to the practice squad) to just the last two draft classes while trying to return to the playoffs.
Finding other ways to capitalize on the resources is an alternative.
“If there’s somebody we want to move up for, we have some extra draft capital to do that,” Schoen said. “If we want to move back and collect some [picks], we can do that, too. You have to look at the roster, not just today, but 2024, 2025.”
League sources told The Post that they believe the Giants will actively pursue trading up by packaging some of their seven picks in the fourth round or later.
Or try to flip a pick for a veteran with contract flexibility who could play significant snaps at a position of need — like cornerback, safety or defensive tackle, sources said prior to Monday’s addition of run-stuffer A’Shawn Robinson to the line.
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“We’ll always pursue any type of opportunity to better the roster,” Schoen said when asked about possibly making a defense version of the earlier trade of a third-round pick for tight end Darren Waller. “Whether it’s trade, draft, late-round, college, free agency, whatever it is, definitely.”
Late first-round picks typically are a fruitful trade commodity, but that might not be the case if only 15-18 prospects are receiving first-round grades, as Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones said Monday in what felt like a representation of the scouting community’s consensus.
The No. 25 pick, which the Giants own, has been traded in each of the last six drafts. Excluding the time that the pick was traded 18 months before the draft, there was one trade down (to No. 31 to add a fourth-rounder and a fifth-founder) and four trades up (to No. 12 involving parting with a future first; to No. 22 with a sixth for No. 25 and a fourth; to No. 22 for a fourth and a sixth; and to No. 23 for a fourth).
The likelier spot for the Giants to be aggressive and stay consistent with their approach of looking for cost-effective starters, sources from rival teams said, is in the second round, with a possible trade up from No. 57, especially if a starting-caliber center is within range.
For reference, the Seahawks traded a third-rounder to move from No. 59 to No. 48 in 2020 and the Browns traded a third-rounder and received a fourth-rounder in return (dropping 24 overall spots) to move from No. 59 to No. 52 in 2021.
Schoen traded back twice in the second round last season, but that was a case of circumstances tied to few solutions for fixing a tight salary cap and wanting to overhaul the bottom of an inherited roster. One year later, he even left open the possibility of dipping into 2024 draft capital to help the 2023 team.
“If it’s the right player and the value aligns, I’d move up,” Schoen said. “If it was a future pick, I would do that, too. Last year, just where we were financially, we needed as many depth pieces as we can. So moving back a couple times last year just made sense. It got us some more bodies, so that was a little bit of the thought process that went into that.”
The thought process this time could emphasize quality over quantity.
