Giants' Reese first puzzle piece for draft
BY ARTHUR STAPLE

Jerry Reese has a new chair in the Giants' draft war room, but this isn't a completely new endeavor for the new Giants general manager - he's run the last five drafts as VP of player personnel, a job he still holds in addition to the GM spot.

"I'll break the ties," Reese said yesterday in the traditional GM's pre-draft meeting with reporters. "We want everybody to like the player that we pick. We don't want to just say, well, this is Jerry's pick. I don't want to overrule the scouts. They go on the road for 200 days. They know the players better than anybody. So we want everybody's opinion."


Other than that, Reese didn't offer too much insight into the way his first draft as GM is unfolding. There have been a few changes - the Giants brought in around 25 draft-eligible players for visits over the past few days, among them former USC wide receiver Dwayne Jarrett, Ohio State wide receiver Ted Ginn Jr. and Florida State linebacker Lawrence Timmons, instead of a group half that size that former GM Ernie Accorsi used to bring in.

Reese also changed the group that administers the Giants' psychological profile, from Joel Goldberg to a company, Human Resource Tactics, employed by nearly half the NFL.

Little else is different, except perhaps for the relative inactivity of the Giants during the seven weeks of free agency. Reese flirted with a few big signings, including offensive lineman Leonard Davis and a trade for Broncos linebacker Al Wilson, but the money being thrown around scuttled most of Reese's plans, and Wilson failed the team's physical.

"The money was out of control," Reese said. "... We didn't feel like it was smart for us to do that."

So the Giants have more than a few areas of need heading into April 28 and the start of draft weekend. Reese likes his team's No. 20 spot. "I think in that 10-25 range, there's a lot of guys with some value," he said. "There could be somebody ranked in our top 10 that falls down to us."

He didn't rule out trading up, though he added that "it would have to be a honey of a deal for us" to consider trading away a first-day draft pick, or any pick of the Giants' eight (seven rounds plus a late compensatory pick) this year.

As for the current hot-button issue of character, Reese has been with the Giants for 14 seasons as a scout and personnel executive. He knows that the organization has long steered clear of questionable people and put a premium on high character, as it did last year, when the Giants traded down in the first round and took Mathias Kiwanuka.

"We really probably didn't need a defensive end but the guy was valued so high for us that we picked the guy," Reese said. " ... In the room at the time I asked them, 'Does anybody in this room think Mathias Kiwanuka is not going to be a Pro Bowl defensive end?' No hands went up. I said, 'We are going to pick this guy. I know we don't need him at this point but at some point he is going to be a good player for us.'"
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By not making lots of moves,.Reese has made a great move. Now just have a decent Draft, and he can plusa few holes