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Next Sunday’s Giants-Raiders game in Las Vegas will go a long way toward determining the No. 1 pick in the 2026 NFL Draft.
Both teams are 2-13. Both have lost nine straight games. No other NFL team currently has two wins.
The Giants own the top spot right now, because they hold the strength-of-schedule tiebreaker over the Raiders. But they won’t need it if they lose in Las Vegas and enter Week 18 as the league’s lone two-win team.
OK, so if the Giants do wind up with the top pick next spring, should they trade it to the quarterback-needy Jets?
This question clearly will loom large regardless of whether the Giants fire general manager Joe Schoen, whose team is 3-24 since last October.
Right now, there are six teams with three wins or fewer — the Giants, Raiders, Browns, Jets, Titans and Cardinals.
The Raiders, Browns (currently third in the draft order), Jets (one spot behind them) and Cardinals all need a long-term quarterback solution. One issue: This is not considered a great quarterback draft.
Pro Football Focus has just two quarterbacks in its top 56 overall prospects — Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza (fifth) and Oregon’s Dante Moore (sixth). So yes, a trade-up move to No. 1 is possible.
If, that is, Giants — and not the quarterback-needy Raiders — hold the pick. And it’s obviously not just the Jets who could move up, even though neither Mendoza nor Moore is regarded as a can’t-miss prospect. Desperate teams do desperate things to get a quarterback.
A Giants-Jets trade for the No. 1 pick (and a quarterback) would be a juicy development. But would the Giants actually do it? Should they?
Well, the Jets have the ammo to move up, after their midseason fire sale. In the 2026 draft, they have an extra first-round pick and two total second rounders. In 2027, the Jets have three total first rounders.
So the Jets have eight picks in the first two rounds over the next two drafts, including five in Round 1.
The Jets would have no problem offering the Giants enough to move up from No. 4 to No. 1 — or even from a lower spot to No. 1. (Of course, if the Raiders have the top pick, they’ll just take a quarterback there.)
And the Giants have so many roster holes that they need all the premium picks they can get, as they build around quarterback Jaxson Dart, who has put together an encouraging but not elite rookie season.
It all seems to make sense, right?
But here’s the major issue: Would Giants co-owner John Mara — who has final say on big-swing moves like these — actually approve a trade with the Jets? What if they wind up getting a star quarterback at No. 1?
That latter question will be less of a problem if Dart blossoms into a legit star and returns the Giants to glory. But Mara — with or without Schoen in the GM seat — handing the Jets their long-sought franchise quarterback answer would be an enormous blemish on his legacy.
Still, trading out of No. 1 for a haul of picks would be mighty tempting for Mara, who wants to do all he can to support Dart.
There’s also this: The Giants might get competing offers — from, say, the Browns, Jets and even Cardinals — for the top pick. That would drive up the price, as quarterback-needy teams bid against each other.
First, though, the Giants must lose to the Raiders, who looked like by far the NFL’s worst team for most of this season — then flashed surprising competence Sunday in Houston.
But considering the Giants’ recent track record — 39 losses in 50 games since their 2022 wild-card playoff win — a loss in Las Vegas is possible.