Keeping Eli and drafting Barkley can both be bad decisions. They’re not mutually exclusive.

Eli’s decline has been evident for some time. If the team decision was to keep him, they needed to start planning on his replacement. The number 2 pick in a draft with 3-5 high level QB’s, depending on your evaluation, is the time to get one. Let him learn from Eli as his career comes to an end, and then you have a talented young QB with a year of studying under a SB champ. Instead, they took a QB late hoping either he turns out to be good or that a future year will have similar quality QB’s. With some positions you can wait and see, but QB is not one of them.

As for it always being okay to draft generational talent, that’s a case-by-case discussion. Barkley will be amazing for many years, but there will be RB’s with comparable production found in later rounds. The league undervalues RB’s and the Giants dedicated extra money and a high pick in one, at the cost of their potential future at QB. Now, they have to potentially skip out on a loaded DLine class to correct the mistake at QB next year

If the team thinks that Eli is still good, but lacks weapons, they're thinking that Barkley will get them back into playoff contention. Obviously, he’s not. The Giants’ plan was not to get a QB high next year, because they planned on picking late. Their plan failed, and the team is losing. That’s why their fans should be mad