The 2022 NFL draft has come and gone and the postmortems are pouring in. Now comes the analyses of which players landed in the right spots.
Bleacher Report’s Gary Davenport recently published a piece to help point out some of those mismatches, one of which is New York Giants’ second-round pick, Kentucky wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson.
The Giants, who entered the second round still needing help at linebacker, in the secondary and at tight end, traded back twice from No. 36 down to No. 43 and then selected Robinson as if they knew he would still be there. There’s a good reason for that. Everyone knew Robinson — a projected Day 3 pick by many — would still be on the board.
The reason for that thinking? Robinson, although highly productive in college, is only 5-foot-8 and considered more a “gadget” player than a legitimate NFL slot receiver. Plus, the Giants already had a similar player in last year’s first-round pick, Kadarius Toney.
From Davenport:
His 4.44-second 40-yard dash speed helps to compensate for his lack of size, and Robinson is shifty in space and runs good routes.
But he is a significantly undersized slot receiver. And given the myriad of needs the Giants had entering the draft (especially in the trenches on both sides of the ball), spending a second-round pick on an undersized slot receiver was a curious selection, especially after Schoen went out of his way to quell the rumors that the team was trying to trade Kadarius Toney.
It would have been better for Robinson to fall multiple rounds and start off with an established quarterback like in Tennessee, Dallas or Buffalo. Early expectations would then be tempered.
Now he carries second-round expectations on a bad team with a crowded depth chart at receiver and one of the league’s worst situations under center.
All true. Robinson, who should have been an “add-on” to the offense must now play a significant role in order to justify his draft status. That may prove to be too much pressure for him to take on.
The only ways this pick made any sense was if the Giants had traded Toney, which was a possibility regardless of how much the Giants pooh-poohed the idea in public.
