How would the giants be different with General Manager Louis Riddick instead of Dave Gettleman: Dwayne Haskins? Odell Beckham? Landon Collins?

Dwayne Haskins hands Saquon Barkley and assists Odell Beckham.

That's the image many Giants fans dreamed of at the beginning of March, and that's what the team would look like if the Giants hired Louis Riddick as general manager instead of Dave Gettleman. But Gettleman had a different plan for the Giants, which includes only one of these three players (Barkley), three potential starters in place of superstar Beckham and a different future quarterback (Daniel Jones instead of Haskins).

Speaking on the podcast of his fellow ESPN employee, Adam Schefter, Riddick said he would have followed a similar plan to that of Gettleman during his first year of work: Draft Barkley on the best quarterbacks, reorganize the offensive line around quarterback Eli Manning and re-sign Odell Beckham to an extension.

But Riddick, who summed up his GM interview with Giants owners for NJ Advance Media, has been moving in a different direction in recent months. Namely, draft Haskins, keep Beckham and security Landon Collins, and separate from Eli Manning.

"I was one of the people who supported what they saw at Saquon Barkley was valid – legitimate," Riddick said. "He was, from the pure value point of view, he was about to be the best player in the project (2018). So, by choosing No. 2 overall, I have no problem with it. I knew what the property felt for him, I knew what that place felt for him, I knew what the league felt for him.

"I understood the philosophy of" If we take it, and if we reasonably evaluate Eli Manning, we simply need to train the team around him, restore Odell's health and make him happy, make sure if the offensive line is held up, playing the defense pretty well, we can continue to build this football team, but we will have to deal with the quarterback at some point, I was fine with that. "

Riddick said that this should have been the # 1 priority for the Giants front office, the head coach and Beckham to be on the same page.

To the credit of Gettleman and his coach Pat Shurmur, they immediately recognized this point. Efforts have been made to obtain the same page. It just did not work.

"I know how Mr. Mara told me that he loved Odell, that he wished Odell was happy and that he was a New York giant," he said. Riddick. "He just wanted to find a way to have that relationship with him. I was 100% behind that. "

The Giants let Collins go into agency rather than duty-free and traded Beckham against the Browns for safety, Jabrill Peppers and No. 17 picks (defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence) and No. 95 (striker Oshane Ximines) in the 2019 project.

"Would I want to keep Landon Collins? Absolutely, "said Riddick. "The guys who, when you're crammed into the workout, receive calls from the sideline in the headset and talk to the rest of the team – safety, linebacker, quarterback, center – I Likes these guys a lot. Landon Collins would have been a guy I wanted to keep. I did not necessarily like that.

A quarter?

"I would have made it a priority to try to write a quarter. I just would not have written this one (Jones), "Riddick said.

"Everyone knows what I think of Dwayne Haskins. I worked with him, I went to his Pro day, watched his tape, know his coaches, know what they asked him to do at Ohio State. I never thought that he should have been penalized for committing an offense with highly qualified weapons. I think (coach) Ryan Day is brilliant. I would have followed this path with her. "

Riddick's point number 1 built the relationship with Beckham. It is possible that the results were the same. There was a chance they were better connected than him with Gettleman, who seemed to consider Beckham as part of the negative culture of the locker rooms he had inherited.

"I would have really tried to have a plan in place to make sure that a relationship was in place between him, the head coach and me, so that six months later we did not feel obliged to go on the road and eat in a ridiculous way. amount of space, "said Riddick.

"That's not why you do that kind of thing. To take those kinds of decisive turns in the decisions you make for high-level players, it tells me that you may have not thought well or that you did not have a good enough plan. It happens. Nobody is perfect. "

Schefter reiterated two criticisms of the Giants for making key decisions:

• Do not check with the 49ers for a final offer on Beckham before trading against the Browns
• Choose Jones in 6th place when he thinks – unlike Gettleman – that Jones would have been available in 17th place and perhaps in choice 30, after the Giants traded three choices to return to the first round.

Here is a warning that Riddick has admitted: his opinions are without being in the building every day. This insider feeling can influence things.

"It changes you when it is you and you are that one," he said. This thing becomes tense. People are really very tight because it's an important decision. "

Riddick suggested that Gettleman may have misinformation about the NFL on the part of his staff. It is clear that he did not want to risk losing Jones.

"When you really do not have skin in the game and you can analyze things in a very objective way, you have no emotion when you talk about it," Riddick said. "Let's just say that, in a general way, you have the following impression:" I have to get this guy out of here, because all I want to do is that this cloud does not rest on me ", the things quickly become personal. I saw it happen. I felt that from some players. "

Ryan Dunleavy can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @rydunleavy. Find our cover of giants on Facebook.