No, the Giants did not pressure Eli Apple, their rookie cornerback, to get his outspoken mother to stop ripping the team.
So says the son of Annie Apple.
“Maybe that’s just an assumption of hers, that she just felt in her gut, but it’s definitely false,’’ Eli Apple said Thursday after practice.
Eli Apple admits this is awkward, him playing for the Giants and his mother attacking his employer and accusing the team of pressuring her son to control what she says and writes.
“Yeah, because like that’s my mom, so I can’t really try to come at her at all, she’s going to check me big-time,’’ Eli Apple said.
“Oh man, honestly I don’t really know how understanding she is. She’s doing her thing right now.’’
Annie Apple is disgusted with the Giants and co-owner John Mara for their response to Josh Brown’s domestic violence issues, She traveled to London for the game against the Rams but could not bring herself to attend the game.
“At that moment I just couldn’t cheer for a team I felt had turned its back on what was right to protect an image,” Apple wrote on SI.com. “It was difficult because I love my son and I’ve always been in his corner at every game, but for me, this was bigger than a game.’’
Eli Apple said “It definitely hurt a little bit’’ that his mother did not attend the game. He has no idea if she will show up Sunday at MetLife Stadium for the showdown against the Eagles.
Asked if he knew the last time his mother did not attend a game he was playing in, Eli Apple said, “It might be the first game since high school, probably.’’
After Eli Apple was taken in the first round of the NFL draft, Annie Apple was hired by ESPN and also by SI.com to share her opinions and commentary. She wrote a compelling piece about being the victim of domestic violence and lambasted the Giants for keeping Brown on the roster and for Mara saying the team knew about Brown’s history of domestic abuse against his wife, but did not know the extent of the abuse.
Her latest salvo stated she was “livid’’ at the Giants because “I felt they were leaning heavily on a 21-year-old kid in an effort to control what his mother says.”
Eli Apple, thrust into the middle of this mess, said it simply is not true he has been pressured by the Giants to keep his mother quiet.
“She was a little bit upset, and I didn’t really have a chance to talk to her,’’ he said. “I guess throughout that whole thing, that’s just how she felt.
“Nobody’s leaning on me or anything, telling me things to tell her. It’s not like that at all. I think the Giants are a classy organization. I’m just happy to be here.”
The Giants have had to sidestep plenty of distractions this season and Apple talking about comments his mother made days before a key game against the Eagles is not ideal.
“It’s definitely a weird position, of course,’’ he said. “You want to just focus on football and have football be your main focus. Sometimes when things like this come up it definitely makes it a little bit hard, because you’re thinking about it a little bit. Just got to move on from it, talk to her a little bit and just try to speak your mind a little bit and move forward.’’
Talking to his mother is not as simple as it seems, Eli Apple said.
“Well, when she was going through her little thing with the whole situation I didn’t have a chance to really talk to her, so she was kinda going off just her feelings and things like that,’’ he said. “I never had a direct conversation about what’s going on.’’
Knowing his mother’s proclivity on social media and for speaking her mind, Apple said a firestorm or two was not unexpected.
“I knew there was going to be some things that come in it because I know how she is,’’ he said. “She loves to be vocal on certain things and she has a big voice and she definitely gets out to a lot of people. I just expected things like this a little bit. It’s all good.’’