New York Giants' Draft Tendencies By Conference

Here at Big Blue View and elsewhere, analysts or guys in their mother's basements like myself (I kid, I kid) try to predict what the New York Giants will do in the draft based on the current crop of players and what we consider to be the Giants' draft philosophy, but what does that even mean? Every team has a draft philosophy, it's the way they build their team. Commonly the Giants draft philosophy is considered as a consensus a best player available approach that focuses on the defensive line in the first round.

But is that true? I thought I'd take a deeper look at the Giants draft tendencies and see if there are indeed any trends the Giants have during the draft, for part of this post I'm going to be piggy-backing off of this story from the National Football Post, guest written by Draftmetrics.com.

Draftmetrics took a look at the drafts of the last 10 years and what kind of schools teams draft from, setting it apart by three categories AQ schools (or schools that automatically qualify for the BCS bowl games), all other BCS schools (Boise State, TCU, Conference USA, etc) and any colleges that do not fit in the first two categories.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who follows me on twitter or reads these draft previews I do -- the majority of the draft picks come from AQ schools, and that is especially true in the earlier parts of the draft across the league.

The blue line in the below graph represents AQ schools, the red line other BCS schools, and the greenish link represents all other schools.

Let's see if that plays out for the Giants.

Since 2002 the following players in the first three rounds have come from non-major BCS conferences schools.

Linval Joseph (2nd), Jerrel Jernigan (3rd), Ramses Barden (3rd), Osi Umeinyora (2nd), and Visanthe Shancioe (3rd), Jeff Hatch (3rd round, 2002 out of Pennsylvania) have come from schools that are not in the major BCS conferences since 200) in the first three rounds. That's six players out of 32 choices or if my math is correct about 19 percent for non-AQ schools and 81 percent for AQ schools.

Note: I counted South Florida as a BCS school, which it is now (Jacquian Williams in the sixth round and Jason Pierre Paul in the first round).

There are a host of players from smaller schools in later rounds -- 16 out of 50. That's 32 percent for non- AQ schools and 68 percent for AQ schools -- with five picks from Round 4 through Round 7 this year based on that information it's likely the Giants will only select 1 or 2 players from non-AQ schools in the 2013 NFL draft.

Not surprisingly to anyone who follows the draft the Jaguars drafted the most non-AQ school players by a whopping 11 percent. The only consistently good team to be on the lower percentages were the Green Bay Packers.

Since 2007 when Jerry Reese became general manager the Giants have selected four players from non-AQ schools out of a total of 19 picks, or about 21 percent, so about the same as they did over the duration of the study.

The breakdown at Draftmetrics went even deeper. Draftmetrics broke down the all picks by conference, looking at the percentage of total picks per team by conference over a 10-year period. Here's what stood out for the Giants.

According to Draftmetrics the Giants have drafted more players from the Atlantic Coast Conference than any other team -- 24 percent. The league average is 13.9 percent, meaning it's nearly twice as likely the Giants will take a player from the ACC than the rest of the teams in the NFL.

The Giants, on the other hand, draft a low amount of Big 12 players -- 2.7 percent (the lowest figure in the league) -- and lowest percentage of Pac 12 players (tied with the Falcons) at 6.7 percent.

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Under Jerry Reese

Under Jerry Reese-since 2007, the Giants have taken four players from the Pac 12 conference (Steve Smith, Terrell Thomas, Adam Koets, Michael Johnson) and one player from the Big 12 (Aaron Ross)

Phillip Dillard and Prince Amukamara are from Nebraska, which is no longer in the Big 12.

Over 10 years 14.8 percent of players drafted come from the Big 10. Under Reese the giants have had a total of 45 picks, of those 45 picks. Of those, the Giants have selected seven players from the Big 10 conference (Jay Alford, Mario Manningham, Travis Beckum, Dillard, Tyler Sash, Greg Jones, James Brewer) or about 15.5 percent. I thought that number would be higher.

The ACC players chosen by the Giants over 10 years were nearly double the league average, but what about since 2007 under Reese?

Kenny Phillips, Clint Sintim, Hakeem Nicks, Andre Brown, Da'rel Scott, Marvin Austin, Jayron Hosley, and David Wilson. 8 out of 45 players or 17.7 percent, which would still rank as the fifth-most in the league terms of percentages of players from the ACC.

What the Giants have done, though, is out of their 13 picks in the first two rounds five of them have been ACC players (roughly 39 percent).

The SEC is the power conference. Over 10 years 17.4 percent of all players selected were drafted from this conference (highest in the league). Under Reese the Giants have selected six players out of 45 from the SEC. Those are: Andre Woodson, John Goff, Stony Woodson, Mitch Petrus, Brandon Mosley, and Rueben Randle. The 13.3 percent total is below average.

What does all of this mean?

Sorry to make you read all of that to tell you that it probably means virtually nothing. The Giants have shown a penchant to draft more ACC players, and earlier, than any other team in the league. That doesn't necessarily mean anything for this year, but it is interesting that the players most commonly projected to be Giants draft picks are from ACC schools.

Of the eight players (based on my perception) that are perhaps most talked about for the Giants (Tyler Eifert, Chance Warmack, Alec Ogletree, D.J. Fluker, Tank Carradine, Bjeorn Werner, Xavier Rhodes, and Johnathan Cooper) four of them play in the ACC (the last four).

Just thought this might be of some interest to all of you out there.

NOTE: Draftmetrics came out with more information this morning I thought you might find interesting. This metric was about the likelihood of drafting quality players from each school, but the specific item that caught my attention was this chart here. The chart here (the second one on the first page) details how likely it is to find a rookie starter based on draft position. The Giants have been criticized for not having their rookies play a lot under Tom Coughlin, the lowest the Giants have picked since 2005 is 15 (Jason Pierre Paul) but are generally selecting between 19-32.

Between pick No. 14 and No. 40 there is a 45.4 percent chance the player will be a rookie starter if from an AQ school and 37.5 for other BCS schools, and 36.8 percent from all other schools.

Between picks 41-66 the percentages range from 24.5 to 39.9%. What's the moral of this little story--it should be Expected that whoever the Giants pick in the first two rounds only have a 50-50 chance at being a rookie starter. Tom Coughlin has a reputation here as a guy who doesn't play young players enough, but as I've said before, that seems to be an unfair reputation--it looks like it's about par for the course.