Bruce Allen: Dave Gettleman doesn’t know our draft board

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The NFC East is getting interesting again.

In the blue corner, Giants G.M. Dave Gettleman. In the red (ok, burgundy) corner, Washington president Bruce Allen.

Gettleman, defending the decision to use the sixth overall pick on quarterback Daniel Jones, said over the weekend that he knows “for a fact” that two other teams would have drafted Jones before the Giants were on the clock again at No. 17. Someone (the Giants) then leaked that those two teams were Denver and Washington.

Allen, appearing on NFL Network, responded to the notion that Gettleman had actual knowledge of Washington’s draft preferences.

“We picked the player we wanted to pick,” Allen said, via NFL.com. “I’m almost positive Dave has no clue what our draft board would be. I don’t know which draft boards he knows, but he doesn’t know ours.”

Gettleman doesn’t know any, absent espionage. That’s the biggest flaw in his gratuitous “for a fact” claim. No G.M. knows another team’s draft board unless there has been spying.

So why does Gettleman insist that two teams between No. 6 and No. 17 would have taken Jones? That’s better than the truth, which is that the Giants feared being leapfrogged at No. 17 by a team smart enough to realize that the Giants were in the Daniel Jones business, given the effort to get the fans and media comfortable with the possibility of Daniel Jones being drafted by the Giants.

By floating the Daniel Jones trial balloon, the Giants backed themselves into a corner. That’s the truth, but Gettleman can’t or won’t admit it.

Regardless, if Daniel Jones becomes a franchise quarterback, it won’t matter whether he was pick No. 6 or No. 17. Conversely, if Jones doesn’t become a franchise quarterback, it won’t matter whether he was pick No. 17 or No. 6.

The best news is that New York and Washington will continue to play each other twice per year every year, with Daniel Jones and Dwayne Haskins going head-to-head and their progress (or otherwise) being compared on an apples-to-apples basis.