Giants go through whole draft without taking a tight end

If you thought the Giants’ pre-draft talk about not needing a flashy new tight end from this year’s crop of incoming players was a smokescreen, well, the joke is on you. Because seven picks later, the Giants still have the same four largely unproven players at the position (although they do appear to be signing undrafted free agent Xavier Grimble from USC, the official announcement of which will probably come tomorrow or Monday).

So how do we go from so many mock drafts calling for the Giants to select Eric Ebron in the first round to them not even paying attention to the position?

“We need a tight end or we need this or we need that,” vice president of player evaluation Marc Ross said. “You get seven picks, and you can’t take everything you need. You can’t have first round picks at every pick that you want and things that you think you need. The tight end position wasn’t a class we felt was very strong. Even with a couple of the guys there are things that to the outside eye you don’t know about some of these guys that devalue them even more.”

The Giants do seem to be at a crossroads with their position. They want big athletic players who can block and catch for the spot – Tom Coughlin called them do-everything “Supermen” – but colleges just aren’t producing them anymore. It’s like needing parts for your 1983 Datsun. Good luck finding them.

“It is worrisome when you look at the draft and, for example, you go to the Combine and you see all these numbers at all these different positions and then the tight end numbers are (not there),” Coughlin said. “That’s a little bit scary. Where are those guys? Where did they go? What are they doing? Are they playing defensive end? What are they doing right now?”

Coughlin said the Giants can’t go to training camp with just four tight ends (five if you count Grimble). So they will be on the hunt for more. Perhaps Jermichael Finley will be available to them if he is medically cleared in the coming weeks.

But general manager Jerry Reese did not seem to think that the Giants would be splurging on the position.

“I said this a couple times already, we have a couple tight ends, young guys, who we want to stay healthy and we’ve tried to develop and it’s time for those guys to get out there and help us,” Reese said, a pretty clear reference to former fourth-round pick Adrien Robinson who is entering his third NFL season without a career reception (the roster also includes Larry Donnell, Daniel Fells and Kellen Davis). “We’ve had tight ends that we’ve been able to develop in the past … You have to put them out there and you have to develop guys at some point. It would be great if you could have guys ready-made that could come in and just line up and be fantastic blockers and fantastic receivers but sometimes it doesn’t work that way. Whatever the skill set is, you’ve got to bring them in and work to their skill set and you have to play the hand you’re dealt and win with it. That’s just part of the business.”

In other words, for Robinson, the time to shine is at hand. Or it will soon be time to go.

“Adrien is very sharp and is able to count,” Coughlin said. “He’s on the field with (three other) guys.”

It could have been more than that if the Giants had drafted a tight end. Or, more to the point, if the Giants had found a tight end they considered draft-worthy.

“In personnel, sometimes you can’t get everything,” Reese said. “You can’t just waive a magic wand and a tight end will show up.”