Marshall’s plan

BRANDON MARSHALL resents that Eli Apple’s personal business has become public because Marshall lived through a tumultuous early NFL career and believes privacy was one of the key ingredients to resolving his most difficult issues.

So Marshall, 33, who has counseled Apple, said Thursday that he “has compassion” for the suspended young Giants corner and even told Apple, “I want to spend time with him this offseason, and I told him it’s not about football.”

“The last thing you want to be is labeled,” Marshall said. “I’ve been labeled my entire career and you can’t shake it, no matter where you go. They say I’m gonna have a clean slate, the media will embrace you, the fans will embrace you. But as soon as anything comes up that looks anything like something of the past, it’s thrown right back in your face. You don’t have that type of grace. People don’t give you that grace when you go through things, and you’re labeled a cancer, or you’re labeled a problem, a bad teammate.

“So for Eli, he has some work to do, and I think that he can get his career back on track because he’s a great kid, got a lot of love in his heart, great talent,” Marshall added. “He just has to work at

HALL OF A CAREER STEROID TESTING OUT WITH THE OLD MENTALITY

it this offseason and whatever happens, I think he’ll be fine.”

Marshall has an extensive history of off-field incidents and run-ins with law enforcement and not until 2011 did he truly address his underlying issues and depression when, as he’s written and talked about often, he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder -- a condition Marshall defined on The Players’ Tribune as a “disorder that affects a person’s ability to cope with and control their emotions.”

A recent story by NJ.com’s Dan Duggan objectively and thoroughly reported details on Apple’s parents’ recent divorce, personal details and finances — relevant and previously unknown background to Apple’s well-documented woes both on and off the field.

Marshall said in his opinion, such a report is “crossing a line” because “we all go through this; it’s not a unique thing. But the only way you get through it is with family and privacy.” And while Marshall thrived early in his career anyway with the Denver Broncos, Apple’s problems have affected both his production on the field and his life away from football.

“I have compassion for him,” Marshall said. “That was just one of the cases where I was able to perform and continue to produce while I was A GIANTS voice that has not been heard from in a while spoke out on Thursday.

Brandon Marshall, who is recovering from ankle surgery he had following the Week 5 loss to the Chargers, addressed reporters for nearly 20 minutes, touching on subjects from his career to the state of the team.

The 33-year-old receiver, who had 18 catches for 154 yards in five games before his season-ending injury, said the time away from the game allowed him to do some self-reflection on himself and pinpoint what needs to be fixed to repair the team.

This is what he discovered:

Marshall is by no means ready to call it quits. The 33-yearold not only sees himself continuing to play for the next couple of years, but views it as a way to close a Hall of Fame career.

“I’m all in on football,” he said. “I’ve rebuilt my body. I think I’m two great years from, and I’ll say it, I want to be a Hall of Famer. I think I got two great years to go and ... I want to be remembered for my career. So these last two years have been tough. Last year with the Jets, this year with the Giants. But I am hopeful the next couple years for me will be major years and some of my best work.”

Marshall said he will be back to running with no restrictions in a couple weeks. He hopes to build up enough strength to the point where general managers and coaches are watching him run routes and feel the need to drug test him.

“I want to go out there and the first route I run I want them to say, ‘is this guy really 33 years old? This really a 33 year-old receiver coming off two surgeries?’ That’s my focus right now, to just reinvent myself,” he said. “I want to go back on the field and I want everybody in the NFL to say this guy needs to be tested for steroids and HGH. There’s no way this guy should look like this and move like that. That’s my only focus moving forward.” The only thing Marshall said that changed for him this year

MEND THE LOCKER ROOM

going through some of the toughest things. There were a lot of things that weren’t reported about me and my story. But if some of the things that I went through with my father and my brothers and some of my closest friends (were) reported, we would have never gotten through those things.

“So Eli, I do have compassion for him, and I talked to him and I want to spend time with him this offseason and I told him it’s not about football,” Marshall said. “I want to help him get through this because from my story, I ended up in a mental institute for three months. I was in the outpatient program because like so many other guys in this locker room (I was) Atlas -- you know the guy who’s holding up the world? You’re holding up your family and everybody around, right? And what that does to a person, especially a young kid fresh out of college with no life experiences, I mean that could break people down. And for me, I ended up in a mental institute for three months.

“So that’s what I saw when I read that story, is a guy that’s really struggling off the field and having a tough time being a professional every single day when he comes to work. He’s a phenomenal athlete. He’s a good person. He’s just going through some things right now. So with the proper approach and the right people around him, he can get his career back on track.” was he brought a new mentality.

Marshall tried to move on from some of the issues that he’s dealt with in the past, citing his time with the Jets where he tried being a leader in the locker room.

“Coming to a new team, leaving the Jets, and there being talk there about Brandon being in the center of the drama because we’ve got guys being late every damn day and you step to a guy and try to hold him accountable, then you’re in the center of the drama,” he said. “So I came here with the mentality of laying low, not really being myself and that’s not me.”

Marshall says that extends to his mentality on the field, too.

“I want to be an All-Pro receiver, I want to be an All-Pro player, I think that’s what makes players great. That tame selfishness of wanting the ball,” he said. “I want to win the Super Bowl, that’s my number one priority, but I want to be an All-Pro receiver.”

While Marshall avoided being the center of the drama, there certainly was plenty of it in the Giants locker room this season.

“I think that there’s probably 10-12 of us that need to get together, rebuild relationships and this is what happens,” he said, without getting into specifics. “When you’re losing it’s tough. It’s a long year, it’s a long season. We need to rebuild relationships coming together, work through some tough issues and once we do that we need to come together and figure out how we want to run our locker room.”