According to Matt Lombardo of NJ.com, ESPN NFL insider John Clayton said the Giants drafted Apple due to “intelligence failure”:
“It wasn’t intelligence as far as the selection, but the intelligence in the office, because I was hearing, like everyone else, that John Mara wanted to take Jack Conklin. He was going to try [to] push Jerry Reese to do that. However, Jerry and the staff were looking to take Leonard Floyd. … Guess what, two teams jumped the Giants and now they had to reach a little bit to take Eli Apple. That kind of diminishes it a little bit.