Round Five: Avery Moss

For perhaps the first time in the New York/New Jersey area, fans of the Rangers, Islanders, and Devils may be rooting for a Penguin thanks to the New York Giants.

- Geoff Magliocchetti

With their fifth-round selection (167th overall) in the 2017 NFL Draft, the Giants selected DE Avery Moss out of 2016 Football Championship Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-AA) runner-up Youngstown State. It’s the Giants first selection of a YSU player since 1948, and first FCS player taken since Cooper Taylor of Richmond in 2013, also in the fifth round.

“Avery Moss is a physical football player,” head coach Ben McAdoo explained. “He has good length, plays with an edge to him.”

His selection came at a somber time for Moss, who received word from the Giants at a Las Vegas hospital, where he was tending to his grandmother, who had suffered a stroke in the days leading up to the draft.

“It felt so great,” Moss said when asked about getting the Giants call. “I’m here at the Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas with my grandma. She just had a stroke a couple days ago, so I was just with her and we were ecstatic to get the news.”