East Notes: Giants, Eagles, Patriots

The Giants have long maintained that they will not select a QB in this month’s draft just for the sake of drafting one, but Ralph Vacchiano of SNY.tv believes that the team needs to identify and acquire the successor to Eli Manning immediately and cannot put it off for another year. The team has the high-end draft capital to land a top collegiate prospect in 2019, and it could still make a play for the Cardinals’ Josh Rosen. There are too many variables that could prevent New York from landing the highly-touted passers in the 2020 class — namely, Justin Herbert and Tua Tagovailoa — and if the Giants don’t get one of those players, then they will have needlessly delayed their return to contention. Vacchiano’s argument has some flaws (for instance, it assumes that a 2019 draft choice or Rosen is the long-term answer), but his point is well made.

Now for more from the league’s east divisions:

• Not long after the Eagles hired Doug Pederson as their head coach in 2016, club owner Jeffrey Lurie said he wanted to draft a QB every year, or every other year, the way his team used to (a strategy that significantly aided roster building). As Zach Berman of the Philadelphia Inquirer notes, Lurie reiterated those sentiments just last month, and now that Nick Foles is out of the picture, the club may return to that approach. The Eagles appear to be plenty comfortable with Nate Sudfeld as their No. 2 signal-caller, but Sudfeld could leave for a potential starting job in 2020, when the Eagles are expected to be flush with draft picks, so Berman suggests the team could add a UDFA passer this season and draft a QB prospect next year.
• Mike Reiss of ESPN.com sees some similarities between the end of Chris Hogan‘s tenure with the Patriots in 2019 and the end of Wes Welker‘s relationship with the club in 2013. In both cases, Reiss says that the team tried to hammer out extensions well before the players hit free agency, but the financial gap ended up being too wide to bridge. In Hogan’s case, the two sides were indeed working on an extension back in August, and even though Hogan landed a fairly modest deal with the Panthers that New England could have easily matched — and, some would say, should have matched considering the team’s WR situation — Reiss says player and team viewed a fresh start as the best approach.
• Last August, the Patriots traded safety Jordan Richards to the Falcons for a conditional 2020 seventh-round pick. In the same piece linked above, Reiss reports that Richards was on Atlanta’s game-day roster enough times to satisfy the conditions of the swap — indeed, he ended up starting 12 games for the Falcons — so New England will get a 2020 seventh-rounder from the Falcons.
• Rich Cimini of ESPN.com believes the Jets‘ newest QB, former AAF passer Brandon Silvers, will have a legitimate chance to win the club’s backup QB job.
• In the same piece, Cimini expresses his belief that the Jets will select Alabama DT Quinnen Williams with the No. 3 overall selection if they don’t trade the pick. Cimini thinks Kentucky pass rusher Josh Allen fills a bigger need, but GM Mike Maccagnan cannot afford to miss on this pick, and Williams is a safer prospect who, like Allen, offers elite potential.