Reese on draft: Focus hasn't changed
In a typical offseason, Jerry Reese already would have spackled up many of the cracks on the Giants' roster with free- agent acquisitions. There would have been some guys who played the previous year but left, either as free agents themselves or in trades, and there would have been new additions being folded into the team during workouts.
But this is not a typical offseason. The NFL has been in lockout mode for six weeks. There has been no movement of players since then, and even when a collective-bargaining agreement is agreed to -- ostensibly sometime before the start of the 2011 season -- it's impossible to say what rules will govern who becomes a free agent and how much money teams are allowed to spend on them.
It might be tempting, therefore, to look at next week's draft as different from any other. But Reese insists the Giants are not changing their focus.
"It is a little strange," he said of having the draft before the free-agency period at his annual pre-draft news conference Thursday. "It's just flipped. Still, we will go into the draft looking for the best players available. Then after the draft when free agency starts, we will probably say, 'OK, let's fill some holes where we think we need some help.' "
Reese noted several times that he doesn't know what the NFL rules or culture will be like when the players are allowed to return to work. At a time of year when football teams inhale information as life-giving air, breaking down reams of data on hundreds of potential players, there are a lot of uncertainties.
The Giants do not want to make the draft another of those uncertainties by changing their approach.
"All we can do right now is to draft," Reese said. "You really don't know what's going to happen. Right now we can control the draft. We are going to try to pick the best players we can in the draft. And we will make the adjustment after the draft."
In one regard, the lockout may be helping the Giants and other teams. Reese, whose background is in scouting, said he's been able to watch more tape of potential picks than he usually does when tied up with free-agency concerns. But the actual process of putting the board together and mapping out a strategy has remained the same.
And for a team that says it "investigates" everything, Reese said there wasn't even a discussion about whether the Giants should adapt their draft philosophy to this anomaly of an offseason.
"We don't want to make it harder than it is," he said. "We're not splitting the atom upstairs in the draft room. We're trying to figure out if these guys are going to be able to help our football team. So we don't try to overanalyze it."
Notes & quotes: One of the players Reese spoke the most about was LB Clint Sintim, a second-round pick in the 2009 draft who was penciled in as a starter last season but played sparingly after losing his job in training camp. "I think he needs to grow up and play like a second-round player that we think he is,'' Reese said, "and give us that value and step in there and show us that he can be a starter for us and play quality football for us."
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