Smokescreen, future opposition research or both?

A year after shocking the NFL and drafting Daniel Jones with the No. 6 pick, the Giants are reportedly getting to know another top quarterback prospect. They have done plenty of research on Oregon’s Justin Herbert, NFL Network reported Monday, including FaceTime conversations with first-year head coach Joe Judge.

The Giants own the No. 4 pick in Thursday’s first round, so word getting out about their work on Herbert could just be a smokescreen trying to get another team to bite on a trade. General manager Dave Gettleman has made no secret that he’s willing to trade down, despite not having done so in seven previous drafts in charge of the Giants (twice) and Panthers (five times).

“We evaluate every position because you want to set your board the right way,” Gettleman said at the NFL Combine. “If you don’t evaluate everybody in the draft, whether people perceive you have a need at that position or not, your board is not right, and if your board is not right, you can’t maneuver properly. Your board has to be right. You have to evaluate everybody and give them the full schmear. You don’t just cursory, ‘Aw, yeah, OK, he’s going in the first round. Here’s his grade.’ No. You evaluate them because it’s the only way you can operate.”

Gettleman was then specifically asked about the quarterback position.

“You evaluate everybody, you give them complete shrift, you don’t give them short shrift. You give them the complete thing and you evaluate and you set your board,” he said.

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The Dolphins, who have the No. 5 pick, and Chargers, up next at sixth, are expected to draft a quarterback, as are the Patriots, whose first pick comes at No. 23. LSU’s Joe Burrow is all but assured of going No. 1 to the Bengals, but Herbert and Alabama wild card Tua Tagovailoa are widely seen as top-10 picks.

Judge also comes from a Patriots background and may be channeling them with regards to getting to know top quarterback prospects. The Patriots are known for doing their research on some of the top signal-callers every year, not because they might draft them but so they are better prepared to face them down the road.

Herbert was seen as one of the top quarterback prospects last year before returning to school for his senior year. Some believe that if he had entered the draft last year, he could have been the Giants’ pick at No. 6, The Post’s Ryan Dunleavy reported.

“Very honestly, I saw him play one game [in 2018],” Gettleman said at the NFL Combine. “I went to the Utah game, I believe it was. I went to the Utah game and he played, but then he didn’t come out so I just kind of dropped it. I obviously need to pick it back up.”

Jones took over for Eli Manning in Week 3 last season and turned in a promising rookie season despite some turnover issues. The Duke product completed 61.9 percent of his passes for 3,027 yards, 24 touchdowns and 12 interceptions while fumbling 18 times.