A BAD APPLE
Eli a ‘cancer’ as Giants implode
IT WAS inevitable in this miserable awful dysfunctional season: Giant on Giant crime. If the NFL would permit it, the Giants should just head to the airport right now and forget about Sunday’s final game against Washington.
Give the 25,000 people who are going up show up at MetLife a full refund as a holiday gift and get on with cleansing away the stench of this season.
In a record-setting four months of franchise humiliation, the locker room finally fractured Tuesday when Pro Bowl safety Landon Collins, the Giants’ second-best player after Odell Beckham Jr., went on ESPN radio in New York and called teammate Eli Apple a “cancer” who needs to be sent on his way off the team.
It doesn’t get any stronger. It doesn’t get any worse. Infighting is the last sign of a shattered team.
When the Giants decide on a new GM, and it will likely be Dave Gettleman, and he has a hand in picking a new coach, one of the first issues on their agenda will be what to do about Apple. He is just 22 years old, was a first-round pick only a year ago and plays a premium position and he has elite skills.
But he has maturity issues. He’s been a knucklehead. Now he has teammate issues.
“There’s one corner that has to establish and needs to grow, and we all know who that is,” Collins said. “That would be the only person I would change out of our secondary group. The other two guys — DRC and Jackrabbit — I love those two guys. They play hard. They love what they do. But, that first pick, he’s a cancer.” That first pick is Apple. Collins could have just called him a bad apple. He called him a cancer. Now that Apple has been called out as a “cancer,” it’s going to be very difficult for him to walk back into the locker room, not only today, when the Giants begin preparations for Washington, but going forward as well. Although just in his third season, Collins has emerged as one of the strongest voices on the team. He is also respected throughout the locker room. Although he did not have nearly the type of impactful season he had in 2016, when he was first-team All Pro and a contender for defensive player on the year, he is so well thought of around the league that he was named to the Pro Bowl for the second straight year. The secondary had been a soap opera this year. First it was Dominique-Rodgers Cromartie getting suspended one game. Then Jackrabbit Jenkins was suspended one game. Then Apple’s mother had brain surgery, and then he was made inactive four straight games (it seemed like an unannounced suspension), played 60 snaps on defense against the Eagles one week ago and then only on special teams against the Cardinals on Sunday.
In the middle of all this, Eli Manning was benched for one game and the next day Ben McAdoo and GM Jerry Reese were fired.
It’s unusual but not unprecedented for a player to call a teammate a cancer in the locker room. But it’s rare that they attach their name to it. Collins is so fed up with Apple that he obviously didn’t care about any repercussions. He probably had all he could take when he recently said he’s been trying to help Apple through his rough times and Apple denied it.
“He’s got lot of personal things that’s going on in his life at this point that no player is — I’m surprised he’s still here,” Collins said. “And didn’t kind of step away from the game, because most players would. He’s got a lot going on with the situation. That’s when you have to be a brother toward him and tell him we got your back and we’re here for you.”
Apple denied that Collins has been mentoring him.
“Landon? No,” he said. “I talk to Brandon Marshall, DRC always been a good person because he kind of went through the same thing around my age a little bit.”
Collins was a bit confused when told Apple said they never spoke.
“Is that what he said? I guess he don’t remember things. I don’t know. It is what it is,” said Collins. “I don’t want to start no controversy with my teammate. I know I have (spoken to him) and I know what I did. I spoke highly of him. It is what it is.”
A story over the weekend on nj.com detailed how Apple’s mother recently divorced his stepfather, who had played a big part in his life, but now he has stopped talking to him. Apple has not addressed A that situation. fter a somewhat promising rookie year in 2016 after the Giants drafted him 10th overall out of Ohio State, this season has been a train wreck for Apple. He was criticized for a lack of hustle on a third-and-33 play against the Rams that resulted in a touchdown and then was awful the following week in San Francisco and was one of McAdoo’s main targets in the “brutally honest” film session a few days later.
Collins calling Apple a cancer is about as bad as it gets. But it was inevitable the Giants would turn on each other.