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“Why would a lion concern himself with the opinions of sheep?”
The New York Giants have myriad problems this year, and one of the biggest is their offensive line. One of the most pathetic units in the NFL, the Giants gave up an otherworldly 11 sacks to the Seahawks on Monday Night Football, with fans consistently critiquing the lack of protection — particularly from second-year tackle Evan Neal, who has been a turnstile.
On Wednesday Neal lashed out at fans who are slamming the Giants’ offensive line, and chose to attack people for their jobs, rather than address concerns.
“Why would a lion concern himself with the opinions of sheep?” Neal said, before adding “The person commenting on my performance, what does he do? Flip hot dogs and hamburgers somewhere?”
The offensive tackle would go on to calls Giants fans who are disappointed with the team “fairweather” and “bandwagon fans.”
This is obviously a whole lot of stupid rolled into a few short sentences. It’s totally unnecessary to say someone’s opinion is irrelevant because of their job — especially when criticizing Neal is absolutely fair. It’s objective true that the Giants’ OL has sucked out loud, and profoundly accurate to say Neal has been playing like trash. The second-year tackle has a 42.5 grade from Pro Football Focus this season, and is getting beat on the majority of pass rush downs he faces.
Neal apologized for his comments after being slammed by local radio all afternoon and evening.
It’s nice to have passion. Hopefully Neal learned something from this, because slamming the most die-hard fans of your team, people who just want to see things improve, is beyond the pale.
