The New York Giants win on the road over the Philadelphia Eagles was the first in a potentially pivotal two game stretch that could all but secure them a trip to the post season.
But the Giants getting their first win in Philadelphia since 2013 wasn’t the story after the game. No, the story has somehow become the comments from Fox commenting crew Joe Davis and [former tight end] Greg Olsen regarding wide receiver Malik Nabers’ body language during the game.
It started with Davis remarking that Nabers’
body language was “terrible”, and it has since spiraled into a thing.
Nabers was, understandably, upset by the comments once they got back to him after the game.
“I’m going to use my own voice and be able to speak up about me being a bad teammate,” he said on Tuesday. “And I felt like that was just a lie, just attacking my character as a football player and as a teammate. Like I said, I’ve never been on a team where anyone has called me a bad teammate that I know of.”
In fairness to Olsen and Davis, they didn’t say that Nabers was a bad teammate during the broadcast. However, these things tend to take on a life of their own, and Nabers took issue with the comments as they were relayed to him.
“I felt like after the game when I got the opportunity to hear those things, I had to speak up about that because those things (are) just not true,” he said. And as far as just the bad body language thing, everybody’s always talking about my body language. Like I’ve said, my body language is the same all the time. Whether I’m having a good game, bad game, losing, winning. You can go (to) games and you can see it for yourself if you want to go look. But as far as the bad body language and things being said that I was saying on the sideline – especially from people that’s watching the game, they don’t know what’s going on down on the field. So, you don’t know what is being said, you don’t know if I’m mad, you don’t know if I’m not. That’s just really everything on it; is my body language is the same all the time. My facial expression is the same all the time. I think a lot of people just don’t know that because they don’t know me.”
“One thing about it is that I’m an ultimate competitor in whether it’s going (well) or if it’s going bad,” Nabers added.
“If I make a play, my body language is I’m a mean guy, raging, slapping my helmet, screaming, never really smiling, but that’s just how I play the game of football,” he said. “I put a lot of stuff into it. I had to put a lot of great work in to get back on the field. I feel like I hold everybody to that standard to play just like that, play mean.”
If there was a problem, Nabers said, it was a dissatisfaction with how the Giants were playing. In his mind, the Giants had come out of their bye week flat and were performing up to level he believes they should.
“It was (the) bye week and we came off flat, we came off slow.” Nabers said. “And I was just trying to set an example of like, let’s get everybody going and my way of getting everybody is going, it’s not going (to) everybody tapping them on the leg and being nice.”
“No,” he said. “it’s a game like, wake up, let’s go.”
Nabers assured reporters that was was perceived as poor body language was a byproduct of his passion for the game. The Giants were struggling coming out of the bye week, and he wanted the rest of the team to match his intensity.
“I’m an aggressive person when it comes to this football stuff because I’ve got a lot of passion for it,” Nabers said. “And I don’t feel like everybody knows that about me. They think my bad body language is me just not caring or I’m frustrated. No, it’s just passion for the game. I put a lot of effort into it and that can come off to anybody how they want to speak to it as far as that but like I said, it’s not hurting anyone. It’s not hurting the team. We won the game. And it got everybody able to (get) going, we scored a touchdown and everything was going great in the second half. So, I’m not (going to) speak on the bad body language because it hasn’t affected the team at all.”
Now? Well Nabers is focused on the quick turnaround and facing the Washington Commanders on Thursday Night Football. But if Greg Olsen wants to reach out, he’s welcome to do so.
“I think that was two days ago, three days ago and I’m focusing on the game right now. If he [Olsen] wants to reach out, he can reach out and we can have a simple conversation. But as far as – I’ve said what I said about the situation, I’m done with it.”
