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Why Giants traded into third round of 2026 NFL Draft to select Notre Dame WR Malachi Fields
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- Why Giants traded into third round of 2026 NFL Draft to select Notre Dame WR Malachi Fields
Just when it looked like the Giants were going to be done on Day 2 of the 2026 NFL Draft, they reached an agreement to trade back into the early part of the third round.
New York jumped back on the clock at the 74th overall pick, sending a pair of middle-round selections and a 2027 fourth-rounder to the Cleveland Browns .
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And with that newly acquired pick Big Blue was able to reel in a player they very highly-coveted, landing wide receiver Malachi Fields out of Notre Dame .
Fields was a Senior Bowl standout, and he sat near the top of the Giants ' draft board from the beginning of Day 2.
"We were targeting him right out of the gate," John Harbaughsaid following the selection. "We were able to get Colton[ Hood] and he was right there in the same clump -- I think Joe[ Schoen] did a great job understanding the draft and where people value certain players.
"We thought we could get him a little later, probably exhausted as far back as we thought we could go, and made an aggressive move to get back up and get to this spot here -- he's a guy we felt had a second-round value, we wanted the player and we got him."
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The 6-foot-4 Fields profiles as a prototypical X receiver, bringing an extremely intriguing blend of size, strength, athleticism, and ball skills to an offense.
He did a better job of using his size to his advantage during his lone season at Notre Dame, racking up a career-high 17.5 yards per reception.
That's the exact element the Giants were hoping to bring to their receiver room.
"It's certainly a different body-type than what we currently have," Schoen said. "So adding that was definitely something that we had talked about doing, we weren't going force it unless the value was at the right spot.
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"Obviously being 6-foot-4.5 and 218 pounds with the catch radius and athleticism that he displays was attractive -- all of those things were almost like if you're building a basketball team, you got your power forward now."
