The New York Giants and New York Jets had a joint scrimmage on Wednesday, August 21, and Giants wide receiver Malik Nabers had some choice words for his team following their disappointing performance.
The most facepalm-worthy moment of the Giants and Jets scrimmage came when the Giants seemed to halt the Jets’ offense as defensive end Brian Burns tipped and linebacker Bobby Okereke intercepted a pass from Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Then, cornerback Dru Phillips was flagged for holding, which nullified the play. Rogers took advantage of the moment, and the Jets scored a touchdown right after that play.
At the end of the game, Jets backup quarterback Tyrod Taylor Taylor and cornerback Sauce Gardner tauntingly called out and waved goodbye to the Giants’ sideline.
When asked about Gardner‘s gesture mocking, Nabers took it in stride. He put it all on the Giants.
“I mean, they can do that,” Nabers said via Giants.com. “They won on the day. Their defense came out here and executed well.”
Nabers then had a four-word message for his team: “We beat ourselves today.”
He added, “So, it’s about really going back into our playbook, going back into trying to be us, trying to find this team that we (are) trying to look for. It’s going back to the preparation.”
During the talk with the press, Nabers also discussed dropping Giants quarterback Daniel Jones‘ pass during the scrimmage.
“It bothered me pretty bad,” Nabers said. “If I had to do it again, I would work on something different on catching the ball. I’ll just go look at it, see what I can do better, and just practice that. Practice getting my eyes around faster and finding the ball in the air.”
Even though Nabers looked strong against the Jets and did catch some passes, he’s focused on the ones he missed, adding, “I had too many drops. I had a lot of catches that could have been made on the field. So, that was about me. But it was a great competition day, a great workday.”
Moving forward, Nabers said he would “look at the film” and “see which better ways I can catch the ball. But continue to stay in the books.”
Daniel Jones Says the Giants ‘Executed Well’ During Scrimmage
Jones also commented on the scrimmage. He noted that the team would have felt better if they had finished “that two-minute with a touchdown.”
“We all got to make plays. Stuff like that’s going to happen,” he said. “We had a chance to come back and still convert, so we got to do that. But, yeah, certainly feels different if we convert that two-minute situation.”
But, Jones was overall encouraged and said, “For the most part (I) thought we executed well. Thought throughout the team drills we moved the ball and executed. Obviously, you want to finish a little better with the two-minute there at the end. Overall, (I) thought we executed well against a good defense.”
