STUFF IT, SKIP!
Giants’ McKinney gets last laugh in war of words with Fox Sports yakker Bayless
Xavier McKinney swears he didn’t have Skip Bayless’ April tweet saved in his Twitter drafts.
But the Giants’ rookie safety still dropped a bomb on the Fox Sports talking head on Sunday night after making his first career interception in the Giants’ Week 17 victory over the Cowboys.
Back on April 24, when the Giants drafted the Alabama safety with the No. 36 overall pick, Bayless had tweeted: “Glad the Giants took the Bama safety, Xavier McKinney, I did not want the Cowboys to take.”
So on Sunday night, McKinney retweeted Bayless’ shade with the mocking message: “Happy belated New Year’s Skip” and a winking emoji. The tweet had almost 83,000 likes and more than 10,000 retweets as of Tuesday afternoon.
“Yeah man, I actually didn’t even get to see when he first said it,” McKinney, 22, said with a smile on a Zoom call Tuesday morning. “And I saw it, somebody just mentioned it to me a couple days ago. So I had one kinda in my bag a little bit, just trying to play with it a little bit.”
McKinney, who comes off as both laid back and confident, admitted he carries a chip on his shoulder now about every team who passed on him in April’s draft, not just Dallas.
And he continued trolling Bayless by saying twice that he’ll never forget the teams that “skipped” on him.
“I’m happy with where I’m at,” McKinney said. “I’m happy with the team I’m with, the Giants. They took a chance on me when a lot of teams just passed by me. So I think any team we play that I know had a chance to pick me up that skipped — skipped — on me and didn’t pick me up, I take that personally. And I go into the games with that same mindset, whoever it is. So it wasn’t any extra with the Cowboys. I take that personally with every team that we play.”
McKinney was disappointed the Giants were eliminated from the playoffs especially, though, because he felt like he was finally just starting to hit his stride.
He wasn’t able to make his NFL debut until Week 12 of the regular season due to a left foot fracture that required surgery on Aug. 26. He logged only five defensive snaps in his first game at Cincinnati and six the next week at Seattle.
But then he saw 38 snaps against the Cardinals, followed by 41 against the Browns, 46 against the Ravens, and a season-high 73 in Sunday’s finale against the Cowboys.
“As far as being out there playing, it took me a while to get going especially knowing all the rotations we were doing,” McKinney said. “And feeling like especially these last couple games I was getting into my groove. That’s why I was really hoping that we could make it to the playoffs because I was feeling like I was getting back to being myself.”
He got experience playing a lot of different positions and coverages, from slot corner to single-high safety to a safety in a twodeep look. And he started seeing his hard work pay off.
In Baltimore in Week 16, for example, Ravens QB Lamar Jackson sailed a high pass that McKinney probably would have intercepted had he been aligned properly. Defensive backs coach Jerome Henderson said McKinney had lined up about three yards too far inside from where he should have been.
Against Dallas on Sunday, though, McKinney caught one interception in the first half that was called back due to a Darnay Holmes penalty, and then he again got his hands on Andy Dalton’s fourth-quarter heave in the end zone.
Top corner James Bradberry said he spent all season seeing McKinney aching to get back on the field while he rehabilitated his foot. So it was rewarding to see the rookie get one in such a big spot. The interception allowed the Giants — with the help of Wayne Gallman recovering his own fumble — to ice the game.
“I was happy when he got the pick because he had missed most of the year with an injury,” Bradberry said. “My locker was close to his, so I would talk to him often, and I could sense his frustration not being on the field with us. So when he was able to make that game-changing play and ended the season with a big victory, I was happy for him because I knew he was happy.”