Giants right tackle Evan Neal made headlines in October when he encouraged the team’s fans to boo louder and asked why he would care about the opinions of people who “flip hot dogs and hamburgers somewhere” in the wake of a blowout loss to the Seahawks.
Neal apologized for belittling the team’s fans, but he hasn’t been able to do much to make up for it on the field. Neal ranks among the league’s least-effective pass blockers when healthy and he is on track to sit out for the sixth time in the last seven games with an ankle injury when the Giants face the Packers on Monday night.
General Manager Joe Schoen said during the team’s bye week that Neal has missed valuable reps in his second season because of the injury and that he needs to play better when he is on the field. On Wednesday, Neal said he believes he’s capable of doing that and becoming the player the Giants hoped they’d get when they took him in the first round of the 2022 draft.
“Of course I can,” Neal said, via a transcript from the team. “I’ve put a lot of dominant reps on tape, a lot of times they go unnoticed, a lot of times the reps that I struggle get highlighted, but if you really sit back and watch the tape, I do a lot of good things. I do a lot of dominant things on the football field that a lot of times go unnoticed, but that’s the nature of being an offensive lineman, you’re not noticed until you mess up pretty much, you know what I’m saying? So, it is what it is. I have to continue to get better, I know I have a lot of work to do, and I embrace it, with a smile on my face, so that’s where I’m at.”
Neal said he doesn’t know when he’ll be well enough to get back on the field to show those dominant skills and didn’t say that it will definitely before the end of this season. Either way, his third year is shaping up as a big one when it comes to determining what kind of future Neal has with the Giants and in the NFL.