Giants First Round Pick: Kenny Phillips

Kenny Phillips is the latest of several safeties from the University of Miami to be drafted in the first round. He came on strong as a youngster in college but suffered a disappointing senior year(although still not bad) last year. He has the size, speed and athleticism to succeed in the NFL, but comparisons to Ed Reed and Sean Taylor are not fair. Phillips is a different type of safety and while he's never going to be a Reed or Taylor I think he will be very solid for us. You can read any of the many scouting reports on him that are floating around out there if you want more details. Here is how I view our 31st pick.

My First Reaction: Outstanding! Phillips was the best choice available when the Giants were put on the clock at the end of the 1st round. If you saw my draft board, you will know that Quentin Groves was my top-rated player left, but I wasn't really expecting Reese to go in that direction. Kenny Phillips makes a lot of sense here.

My Prediction for Phillips: I think Phillips can come in and almost immediately full the void left by Gibril Wilson. He will most likely win the starting job along with newcomer Sammy Knight to form a fairly formiddable, although not spectacular, safety tandem. Two things that I really like about Phillips are his size and intelligence. A lot of people question his motivation so we will have to see how that goes, but I think our group of team leaders and coaches can resolve those problems better than most others. Another thing that I love about this pick is that it move James Butler from being one of the worst starting safeties in the league to being one of the best backup safeties in the league. That could prove to be a major factor as the season unfolds and it has gone largely overlooked in the few days since the draft.

I will be writing up short articles like this for the rest of our draft picks in the next few days. So check back for those.

In the meantime, here is a video of Phillips in action. Just disregard the jibber-jabber at the end...