No matter who wins the Giants-Bears game on Sunday, Giants win
Head coach Joe Judge of the Giants looks on during the first quarter against the Philadelphia Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field on December 26, 2021 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Credit: Getty Images/Scott Taetsch
The Giants can’t lose on Sunday.
At least not when it comes to something that many teams in their lowly position start thinking about late in a bad season: draft positioning.
Oh, sure, they can be outscored by the Bears at Soldier Field. It’s not too hard to envision that happening, given their recent state of play. They could fall to 4-12 and leave Chicago on the first weekend of the new year without having claimed an actual victory since Thanksgiving weekend.
They also could figure out a way to scrounge some points together, clamp down on a Bears offense that can be just as ineffective as their own has proved to be, and snap their four-game losing streak.
More often than not, such a scenario would be frustratingly counter to the hopes of fans who, once their team has been eliminated from postseason contention, start rooting for losses and the higher picks that accompany them.
Usually, a gamebetween two teams with a combined 9-21 record would be all about jostling in the upcoming draft order. But because the Giants executed a draft-day trade in April, moving back nine spots in the first round to acquire Chicago's first-round pick in 2022, Sunday's outcome will have almost no impact on the value of those assets.
Both teams are so bad that the two picks almost certainly will be top 10 selections, likely landing somewhere between third and eighth overall.
Hooray?
Maybe for the fans, but for both teams, the failures of the 2021 season mean no one knows who will be around to enjoy the spoils of that swap.
The Bears could clear out their house from top to bottom and bring in a new regime to try to rebuild the roster around Justin Fields, the quarterback they took when they traded up.
And the Giants? Dave Gettleman spent his entire career in the NFL without ever trading back in a single draft, and after finally doing so in 2021, he seems unlikely to be around when that bounty finally comes into being.
The Giants figure to be moving on from Gettleman once this season comes to a merciful end next week, and they’ll begin a search to find a new general manager who will use the picks Gettleman acquired to put his or her first fingerprints on the franchise.
Even Joe Judge, whose seat is getting as hot as the weather at Soldier Field will be cold on Sunday but remains likely to be back next year, wanted no part in discussing the draft picks exchanged between the two teams.
Judge was asked if he has kept tabs on the Bears this season — knowing that the worse they did, the better the Giants’ pick would become — and a man who is hardly ever terse or pithy in his responses simply said: "No."
If the season already were over (and don’t think the Giants and Bears don’t wish it was, on some level), the Giants would hold the fifth overall pick and own the eighth overall pick from Chicago. According to ESPN’s Football Power Index, there is a 47.3% chance that at least one of them eventually will land in the top five.
If the Giants win — as in actually outscore their opponent — their true draft slot would be No. 8, with the Bears entering the top five.
If the Giants lose to the Bears, it opens the slim possibility that they could slide far enough to secure the third overall selection. Jacksonville and Detroit, two two-win teams, almost assuredly are going to have the first two picks. If the Giants finish 4-13, they could be next in line, although their strength of schedule would put them behind Houston and the Jets (two teams that currently also have four wins) if none of them wins again this season.
That’s not what the Giants are hoping for, of course.
"We’ve just got to continue to fight for each other," running back Saquon Barkley said. "We know the season didn’t go the way that we would like it, but we only have two more opportunities left as a team . . . With these last two games, starting with Chicago, we’ve got to come out here and fight. That’s kind of got to be the whole theme of the team and for each player."
Two years ago, the Giants played Washington in the last game of the season. It was a victory on the field for the Giants but widely considered a loss in the bigger picture because it left them with the fourth overall pick and handed edge rusher Chase Young to Washington with the second pick.
At least the Giants know that if they do win Sunday, this time they won’t be spoiling their draft position this coming April.
In fact, about the only bad outcome for the Giants would be a tie against the Bears. That would push both teams further back in the draft order.
Given how things have gone for the Giants of late, don’t count that out.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
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