Max Kellerman Wants Giants to Trade Up and Draft QB, Inciting Rage From 'First Take' Crew

The New York Giants are sitting pretty at the No. 11 overall selection in the 2021 NFL Draft. Given that as many as five quarterbacks are projected to go in the first 10 picks, the Giants should have their choice of skill position players to either make Daniel Jones' life easier or bolster an already pretty good defense. The most recent reports suggest New York is also considering trading down, a rarity with Dave Gettleman but a move that would make a lot of sense considering how much farther the team has to go before reaching legitimate playoff contender status.

Max Kellerman, ESPN's resident Giants fan, wants his team to take Door No. 3 and do something nobody expects: Trade up and pick whichever quarterback slides past the No. 4 overall pick. He brought those thoughts to a public forum on First Take today, which borrowed Dan Orlovsky to jump in as an NFL analyst. He and Stephen A. Smith were enraged by Kellerman's suggestion.

It is a pretty wild suggestion, even if the response is a bit over-the-top because nobody should have that kind of response to a sports take but that's what sports debate television is, for better and for worse. Trading up to draft a quarterback is the kind of thing you can do in Madden but not the sort of move that general managers with jobs on the line would even consider.

Regardless of one's opinion on Jones and his true potential, investing a sixth overall pick in a quarterback is too much to move on after only two years. QBs are too valuable to just call it a sunk cost and move on because someone better slides in the draft. Admittedly, the Cardinals did exactly that when they picked Kyler Murray one year after selecting Josh Rosen. But that was different because they had the first overall pick when they took Murray. If the Giants were so bad in 2020 with Jones at the helm they ended up with the worst record in football, then we'd be having a different discussion.

But they weren't. Jones was good enough to keep the team in the divisional race until the last week of the season. Which isn't saying much at all, since it was the NFC South and New York finished 6-10. But it was enough to show that Jones isn't awful. He isn't good, yet. But there were worse starting quarterbacks in the NFL last year.

Gettleman's fate is tied to Jones. If Justin Fields fell all the way to 11, I'm sure there would be a discussion had in the draft room. But it's unlikely they'd take him even in that scenario, and they certainly will not be trading up to make Kellerman's fantasy reality. That's the kind of big-brained move everyone wishes their team would make but the team rarely does because it's not realistic.

Giants fans can still hope, though. Such is the beauty and danger of the offseason.