Giants news, 4/23: Saquon Barkley, mock drafts, prospect rankings, more

Draft week is here! Finally! Only a few more days of discussion about what your New York Giants will do. Then, the arguments about what they actually did will begin. With that in mind, let’s peruse your Monday morning headlines.

Mike Mayock's 2018 NFL Draft position rankings 3.0 - NFL.com
Mike Mayock reveals his final position-by-position rankings for the 2018 NFL Draft. There's movement across the board, including a new No. 1 wide receiver and linebacker.

A lot of ‘Jake Lockers’: This QB draft class is dividing NFL experts
There will be a feeding frenzy at the top of Thursday night’s NFL draft, where desperation rushes the passer, where hyperventilating franchises sack the...

Mock Drafts: An Oral History | SI.com
The strange story how of a hobby that (almost literally) started in a guy’s basement grew into an all-consuming NFL industry—for better and worse

Saquon Barkley is a hometown superstar - 2018 NFL Draft's projected first-round running back
The NFL draft's top RB was a superstar long before Penn State in a tiny town still big enough to turn out a crowd almost double its size to honor him.

2018 NFL draft - Ranking, projecting the best running backs in the class
We know Saquon Barkley is a great prospect. Just how great? Using Football Outsiders' BackCAST, we project the top of the new class of backs.

Todd McShay's 2018 NFL draft grades comparing Saquon Barkley vs. elite running backs
Saquon Barkley is the best running back prospect since ...? Here's where Todd McShay grades him vs. Adrian Peterson, Ezekiel Elliott and other first-round RBs since 2007.

Mel Kiper favorite 2018 NFL draft prospects at every position - Most underrated picks
Mel Kiper picks the prospects he likes most and adds round projections for each. Nick Chubb could be a steal on Day 2 of the draft.

The Way Everybody Measures NFL Schedule Strength? It’s Wrong. | FiveThirtyEight

In a league where about half the teams that make the playoffs in any given year miss them the following season (a whopping eight 2016 playoff teams missed the cut in 2017), assuming every team’s record will remain the same never really made any sense.

But there is a stat that does correlate with upcoming-season wins: Pythagorean wins, based on points scored and points allowed rather than win-loss record. Developed for baseball by Bill James and modified for other sports by current Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey, this equation is where Pro-Football-Reference.com’s “expected wins” number comes from. In a 2007 blog post, Drinen found that this stat significantly correlates with next-season wins.

If we compare actual wins to expected wins for 2017, we see which teams are most likely to improve in 2018 and which are most likely to regress.

GM power rankings: Howie Roseman, Kevin Colbert among best - NFL.com
Dave Gettleman, Giants (13)

Gettleman joined Dorsey in the random wave of successful general managers getting fired last summer, seemingly for personality issues rather than job performance. Gettleman's "brusque management style" (as the Charlotte Observer termed it) might play better in front of a podium than in a board room, but his emphasis on line play helped routinely get the Panthers into the playoffs. While some general managers lack clear direction or conviction, Gettleman is unafraid to make unpopular moves and builds his teams around brute force -- a couple reasons to believe he might not take a quarterback No. 2 overall in this draft.