Given the NFL’s most recent, and lasting, impression — the Broncos defense swarming and burying Cam Newton and the Panthers in Super Bowl 50 — the in-vogue desire coursing through many team headquarters nowadays goes like this: Get us someone like Von Miller.
Well, the Giants might be able to do just that in the NFL draft, but selecting Noah Spence with the No. 10 pick comes with an enormous caveat: Can you trust him?
That is a main question for the Giants to answer this week as they head to the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. Spence will be there and getting a feel for what kind of person he is, off the field, figures to be crucial information when determining if Spence is the centerpiece for rebuilding a defense in shambles.
“In terms of Spence, the interviews are going to be important,’’ Mel Kiper Jr., ESPN’s chief NFL draft analyst, said Monday on a conference call.
No kidding. How Spence comes across as a person will be more important than how he looks as an athlete. Kiper, in his most recent mock draft, has the Giants taking Spence with the 10th pick, figuring defensive studs such as linemen DeForest Buckner of Oregon and Joey Bosa of Ohio State, plus linebacker Myles Jack of UCLA, will already be gone.
“From a pass-rush standpoint, there’s nobody that is in the mix with Noah Spence, at that point [No. 10] he’s the only guy what would make a lot of sense as a combo defensive end, outside linebacker,’’ Kiper said. “You don’t have many options of guys that can get after the passer at that particular point in the draft.’’
Finding people to get after the passer is the top priority for the Giants — they had only 23 sacks in 2015 — and Spence is a proven commodity based on that particular skill set. He had eight sacks as a sophomore at Ohio State and 11.5 this past season as a junior at Eastern Kentucky. Why he transferred is the reason he is perhaps the greatest risk-reward player in this year’s draft.
As coach Urban Meyer’s first five-star recruit, Spence failed multiple drug tests at Ohio State and spent time in rehab for an admitted addiction to the party/club drug Ecstasy. He was kicked out of Ohio State and banned by the Big Ten. After transferring to Eastern Kentucky, Spence was arrested for public intoxication.
Could the Giants afford to take a chance on him, with the 10th overall pick?
“If I say, ‘We’re only taking safe players,’ someone will say, ‘Why don’t you guys take some chances on some guys you might hit on instead of just playing it safe with a middle-of-the-road kind of guy?’ ’’ Giants general manager Jerry Reese told The Post at the Senior Bowl. “It goes both ways.
“All of this is risk-reward. You never know what you’re going to get sometimes. It looked like a duck, walked like a duck, quacked like a duck. Get out there, it’s not a duck. We get paid to make decisions about the personnel. We want to get more right than we get wrong.’’
Spence could be a big right or an even bigger wrong. He was named the Ohio Valley Conference co-Defensive Player of the Year, and Kiper pointed out that, at nearly 6-foot-3 and 254 pounds, he is bigger than Miller was when he came out of Texas A&M in 2011.
“We don’t know what he’ll run yet,’’ Kiper said. “Miller ran [4.53] and did 21 reps, had a 37 [inch] vertical. Let’s see how close Spence is to those numbers. You think about the 10th pick, the 15th, 20th pick, he’s going to go somewhere high.’’
Spence does not have the size of a classic 4-3 defensive end, where the Giants prefer more bulk. But Spence could line up as an outside linebacker and go get the quarterback. If he washes out, the cries of “Told you so’’ will be deafening. The Giants this week will try to determine just how much of a risk Noah Spence represents.