Joe Schoen Reveals How High He Was Willing to Trade Up in Round 1 of NFL Draft

The Giants traded up one spot in the first round in the 2023 NFL Draft, but general manager Joe Schoen was willing to go even higher had the price been right.

The suspense for the New York Giants 2023 draft is over, as we now know who the picks were and what the Giants did or didn't do to get them. But it's still always fascinating to find out some of the behind-the-scenes nuggets about what almost happened, especially in the early draft rounds.

One thing that could have come to fruition for the Giants in the first round but didn't was their trading up higher than the one spot they swapped with the Jaguars. In an interview with Bob Papa and Charlie Weis on SiriusXM NFL Radio Wednesday, Giants general manager Joe Schoen revealed that he began making calls to trade up from No. 25 to “probably as early as Seattle” at No. 20.

“If the price made sense for the player we were going after, we would have pulled the trigger,” Schoen said. “We were patient and got to 24, and then you have to worry about teams behind you coming up.”

Schoen didn't indicate who the Giants might have been targeting had they moved up to No. 20, but it's probably safe to assume, given how the board started to fall, that he might have had an eye on drafting a receiver. 

The Seahawks took the first of four receivers, Ohio State's Jaxon Smith-Njigba, the first receiver off the board. The Chargers then grabbed TCU receiver Quentin Johnston, followed by the Ravens, who took Boston College's Zay Flowers, and then the Vikings, who grabbed USC's Jordan Addison.

With those four receivers off the board, and with Illinois CB Devon Witherspoon going to the Seahawks at No. 5, Mississippi State's Emmanuel Forbes going to the Commanders at No. 16, and Oregon's Christian Gonzalez going to the Patriots at No. 17 following a trade, it now makes sense why Schoen said after the draft that things were starting to get a little tense for the Giants.

To make sure that no one would leapfrog ahead of them to take Deonte Banks, the Giants swapped first-round picks with the Jaguars and threw in their fifth-round (No. 160) and seventh-round (No. 240) picks to ensure they got what was presumably the last player with a first-round grade on their board at a position of need. 

“We were a little bit aggressive to trade up a couple of times, but there were players that we coveted and wanted to make sure that we were able to get. We were still able to do that and have seven picks,” Schoen said.

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