EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- It all comes full circle. Here come the New York Giants potentially coming on the clock near the top of the 2026 NFL draft next week with the best player on the board being a running back.
Namely, Notre Dame's Jeremiyah Love, the consensus top offensive skill position player. ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. says he has Love graded in a similar range to Christian McCaffrey, Saquon Barkley, Bijan Robinson and Jahmyr Gibbs when they came out of college.
It's possible given this evaluation that the Giants could be faced with the same question they did in 2018 when they selected Barkley second out of Penn State. Is it worth taking a running back with such a high pick?
New York, with needs all over the roster, selects fifth Thursday.
Love would be a fit with new coach John Harbaugh's desire to build the Giants into a dominant running team. And Harbaugh clearly believes that Love is a very talented player.
"Yes, I do," Harbaugh said recently at the annual league meetings. "Yes, I would probably say very, very good player. Put a couple verys in front of that. Maybe a couple more. He's really good!"
Good enough for a top 5 pick? In this draft, the answer is likely yes.
The bigger question will be whether Love is still on the board when the Giants pick in the first round. Multiple league sources (including some inside the Giants building) are working under the premise that Love will be gone before New York picks. There have been whispers he could go third to the Arizona Cardinals, fourth to the Tennessee Titans or some club could trade up to grab the running back who averaged 6.9 yards per carry combined over the past two seasons.
But Love is expected to at least be part of the conversation with the Giants at pick No. 5, regardless of who is still on the board. General manager Joe Schoen conceded earlier in the week this isn't a normal draft because of a lack of premium position players at the top. An argument could be made that the draft's best players are at traditional non-premium positions such as running back (Love), safety (Ohio State's Caleb Downs) and middle linebacker (Ohio State's Sonny Styles).
But perhaps the Giants and others view it a little different. They seem to view Love as more than a running back. Schoen said he's an "offensive weapon" because of his ability to catch the ball and split out wide on third downs.
Even so, the nontraditional premium positions are in play this year because of the talent pool at the teams' disposal.
"Throw positional value out this year," a respected GM told ESPN's Peter Schrager recently.
That seems to be the approach the Giants are taking.
"Yeah, we're going to take the best player available and we're not going to rule any of those out," Schoen said at his predraft news conference. "But ... that's part of our thought process when we go through the evaluation as you're building the team. You do go through those scenarios."
Add Kiper, who for years said he wouldn't take a running back in the first round, among those who have come around. He's adjusted for those with versatile skill sets.
"They say adapt or die," Kiper said. "Well, you adapt and you say, OK, these running backs now are so accomplished as receivers that they're much more than just a running back. Just the swing passes and the screen passes is not Jeremiyah Love. You can put him in the slot; you can put him wide.
"Bijan Robinson, you think about Jahmyr Gibbs, Christian McCaffrey, all those backs are more than just a great running back. They are great receivers, and you can put them out in the slot, put them out wide. ... So when you put it all together, [Love's] much more than just a running back. He's a weapon, he's a fear factor player. As were those other guys. And that's why they all had grades that were up there in that stratosphere"
Schoen pointed out that generally teams want premium positions at the top of the draft because not only are they getting great players, but they are also getting significant value. The point being that the Giants' fifth pick will get a deal slotted to be worth $11.4 million per season. That would immediately place them 11th among running backs in annual per year salary (APY) at a position where the top-paid player, Barkley, averages $20.6 million.
At, say, wide receiver, the $11.4 million would put that player 34th in APY at his position while the top player, Ja'Marr Chase, gets over $40 million. So a wide receiver at pick five would theoretically provide greater value than a running back.
But this year's draft is different than when former general manager Dave Gettleman and the Giants boasted about not even taking phone calls about the No. 2 pick when they selected Barkley. The debate at that time was more about how can they not take a quarterback with the No. 2 selection when Eli Manning was 37 years old and the team was coming off a 3-13 campaign.
Schoen says the Giants are in a much different position now than a few years ago, when he drew a hard line on re-signing Barkley. The All-Pro running back went on to sign with the rival Philadelphia Eagles in 2024 for just over $12 million per year and won the Super Bowl in his first season with the team.
"I would say we're in a different place," Schoen said. "We have a quarterback [Jaxson Dart] on a rookie deal. At that time, our offensive line was different. We didn't have [right tackle] Jermaine Eluemunor, we didn't have [left guard] Jon Runyan, we didn't have Brian Burns, we didn't have Malik Nabers, so the roster was different, and there's a time and a place to [invest more in running back] -- in terms of the roster construction."
Adding intrigue to the running back debate with the Giants is that they still have two promising young running backs on their roster with Cam Skattebo and Tyrone Tracy Jr. Skattebo injected life into the Giants offense before fracturing his ankle last year. Tracy had over 700 yards rushing in each of his first two professional seasons.
The argument could be made that Love would be a luxury addition for the Giants with those two in a room that also includes veteran Devin Singletary and others. New York still has a lot of other needs, specifically on defense and on the interior of its offensive line.
"We like our running back room now," Schoen said. "Skatt had a really good rookie year. Tyrone Tracy has been a 1,000 yard all-purpose guy the last two years. Devin is back. Turbo [Dante Miller], Eric Gray coming off the injuries. We'll see what happens on draft night. But [I] like the room, the way it's constructed right now."
Harbaugh has stressed on multiple occasions that the goal is to bring in the best players. It's possible when they're on the clock that Love is just that.
It could make all the arguments about the running back position mute. And it would require the Giants -- and Schoen -- to have come around to complete the circle.