Evan Neal Called Out Giants Fans For Booing Him And The Team Which Caused Don La Greca To LOSE HIS FUCKING MIND On The Radio
Mitchell Leff. Getty Images.It appears that only a year and a half after he was drafted, Evan Neal has officially become the Giants' next Ereck Flower. Good times!
First we had the disappointing rookie season that immediately had every Giants fan worried.
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Evan Neal and Ereck Flowers were both #Giants top-10 draft picks. Here's a comparison with @PFF numbers that suggest Flowers > Neal at this early point in their careers:
Year 1 Flowers: 54.9 overall grade, 58.9 run-blocking grade, 50.5 pass-blocking grade, 5 sacks allowed, 17 hits allowed, 50 hurries allowed
Year 1 Neal: 41.8 overall grade, 48.1 run-blocking grade, 42.3 pass-blocking grade, 8 sacks allowed, 10 hits allowed, 34 hurries allowed
Year 2 Flowers: 69.4 overall grade, 73.5 run-blocking grade, 69.4 run-blocking grade, 5 sacks allowed, 9 hits allowed, 47 hurries allowed
Year 2 Neal (*extrapolated over full season): 40.9 overall grade, 58.4 run-blocking grade, 36.5 pass-blocking grade, 6 sacks allowed, 17 hits allowed, 51 hurries allowed
Research with @Connor_J_Hughes
Then we had the absolutely preposterous lowlight that perfectly summed up their play:
And now we have the part where the player battles the fans of his team through the media. Actually I don't know if Flowers did that but all the NFL aggregator accounts are running wild with this Evan Neal quote right now on Twitter.
𝗧𝗥𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗚: #Giants RT Evan Neal says that the fans who criticize him probably “flip hot dogs and hamburgers somewhere” via @DarrylSlater
Evan Neal also says some of the Giants fans are “fair weather” and “bandwagons” for booing the team when things aren’t going well. He says he knows that he has to improve.
“Why would a lion concern himself with the opinion of a sheep? The person that’s commenting on my performance, what does he do? Flip hot dogs and hamburgers somewhere? And how can you say you’re really a fan when we’re out there battling our asses off — and the game wasn’t going well — but the best you can do is boo your home team? So how much of a fan are you, really?”
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Ahhhhh nothing like a New York athlete vs. New York fans battling in the media about booing a terrible team/player. It's been WEEKS if not MONTHS since we had a showdown like this. I don't flip hot dogs and hamburgers but I do eat them. A whoooooole lot of them. I also think you roll hot dogs instead of flip them when they are on the grill but that's an entirely different matter that will require picking Frank The Tank's brain.
Anyway, I have been watching many shitty New York sports teams while chowing down on those foods and I can tell you this will not end well for Neal. You can talk shit about the fans that are booing, but they need to find a way to express their unhappiness because they are sick of watching you get dog walked every game (except for one half in Arizona) or in Neal's case dog walked by every single opponent that lines up across now.
Now I actually think that booing your own team's player is counterproductive because I've never heard a player say that he turned it all around because his workplace became a negative nightmare. If anything, Philadelphia of all places proved the opposite could be true by cheering Trea Turner until he went from a struggling ballplayer to a slugging ballplayer for the Phillies.
But I also think it's fine if fans boo because they paid their money to show up at the stadium for a team they cared about before this shitty player entered their lives and will be doing so long after that player stops cashing checks to ruin their lives 17+ times a year. If you don't want the boos, play better. I get all that.
Another way to look at it is the way Don La Greca did on today's Michael Kay Show.
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Yup, we've reached the point where sports talk radio hosts are calling players fat ass pieces of garbage and telling fans to boo him in public or after they win a championship. Good times in Giantsland! Remember when Darren Waller's hamstring being banged up was our biggest concern before Week 1? I'd give anything for those problems right now.
Instead we have Mount La Greca exploding on a player whose improvement would be pivotal for the Giants to take the another step forward after last season. Instead he has somehow seemingly gotten worse, which has caused the Giants to take two steps back and Don La Greca to turn into an angry Santa Claus.
Luckily for Evan, I have come up with the perfect comeback to Don La Greca and all the boo birds in his ear. Play well this Sunday. And the Sunday after that. And every single game of your NFL career. Or at least most of them because we all have some bad days at work followed by chirps from fans, comment sections, or customers saying how much you suck in your Yelp reviews.
If you do that, the boo birds will magically go away when you are playing well and your QB isn't running for his life every play. Trust me, I know this as a Mets fan who had to listen to people booing Francisco Lindor even though he's the best shortstop they will ever watch grace the diamond for their baseball team. You won't beat them by talking big off the field. You will beat them playing big on it.
Okay, that sounded like a lame sign off from an episode of The Sports Reporters, which half the people reading this blog are too young to even know about. Anyway, please stop getting your ass kicked every week Evan which will allow us to stop letting you know how much we hate watching you play football with boos and we can stick to flipping our hot dogs, whatever that means.
UPDATE: We got a Notes apology!
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I don't care if this apology was Evan Neal's idea, his manager's idea, or "Mr. Mara's" idea. All of this nonsense is done in my eyes. Now let's go win a football game….or at least not get embarrassed!