Kadarius Toney should have jumped for joy at the prospect of playing for a creative mind like Brian Daboll, should have beaten Daniel Jones to the Giants’ facility for the start of the voluntary minicamp.
After his turbulent rookie season where Toney’s Law supplanted Murphy’s Law, there was every reason for him to Show Up and Grow Up and get in the good graces of the new regime instead of forcing Daboll to answer questions about his whereabouts and compelling GM Joe Schoen to entertain trade offers.
Kadarius Toney did finally Show Up to take a gander at the new playbook.
Now it is time for him to Grow Up.
It is time for him to ignore once and for all whatever he reads on social media and be the kind of New York Football Giant that Daboll and Schoen crave for their massive rebuild: Smart, tough, dependable.
Remember what Dave Gettleman said after drafting Saquon Barkley when he was asked why he had no interest in trading out of the second overall pick?
“People call you and they want the second pick of the draft for a bag of donuts, a hot pretzel and a hot dog.”
Presumably, Schoen would be able to fetch a tad more than a bag of donuts, a hot pretzel and a hot dog for Kadarius Toney. But a mid-round pick for a 23-year-old first-rounder?
Better Schoen should exhaust every effort to salvage him.
Oh, and remember what Gettleman said about Odell Beckham Jr. before signing him not to trade him and then trading him less than a year later?
“You don’t quit on talent.”
Toney is a talent. When he has the ball in his hands, he can take your breath away. You can’t take your eyes off him. He can stop on a dime and leave defenders change.
If you can get him on the field and keep him there, that is.
“He’s a dynamo when we’ve seen him in a few games. … New Orleans and then Dallas were like, ‘Wow.’ Like Must See TV type stuff with the ball in his hands,” Giants legend Carl Banks told The Post. “Until he puts a body of work there, I’m not crowning him the Second Coming of Gale Sayers or anyone else. Or the First Coming of Kadarius Toney. ’Cause I don’t think he’s arrived.”
When and if he ever does arrive, Banks would like to see him arrive with the Giants.
“That’s all up to him though,” Banks said. “I think he controls that as much as anybody.”
The previous Giants regime drafted Toney last year with the 20th pick in part because it secured the Bears’ 2022 first-rounder, in part because the Eagles traded up and over the G-Men to steal WR DeVonta Smith … and in part because nothing was more critical to the franchise than Daniel Jones taking that elusive next step and getting him a difference-maker.
And still is, a year later.
Jones will almost certainly have a first-round right tackle on Thursday night to bookend Andrew Thomas, so there’s that. But in the Big Blue wide receiver room, neither prize free-agent signing Kenny Golladay nor the injury-plagued Toney (39 receptions, 420 yards in 10 games) caught a single touchdown pass from him in 2021.
Daboll is the right coach to reach Toney, not only because he has a track record of putting offensive players in positions to succeed, but because he is a relationship builder. The same tough love that Daboll gave Josh Allen could be beneficial for Toney’s development.
Daboll is a football lifer.
It’s on Toney to convince him and Schoen and skeptical Giants fans who view him as a lightning rod that being Kadarius Toney, No. 89, means more than being Yung Joka the rapper. There were anonymous pre-draft concerns that Toney’s commitment to the game was hardly Manning-esque, but the Giants told us that they vetted him thoroughly and were comfortable that this was a good kid from a good family. In the little exposure I had to him last season, I liked him. From what I could tell, most of his teammates did as well.
Trading Toney during the draft or before June 1 would cost the Giants $2.3 million in cap space with a $5.5 million dead cap penalty. Schoen has broken his back from Day 1 getting the Giants into position where they have a mere $5,588,274 in cap space.
“You can give me 1000 different definitions of what it means to be a pro,” Daboll said almost two months ago. “Being on time, working hard, all the things that we talk about. All these players and all the new coaches, including myself, it’s a clean slate.’’
If Kadarius Toney has one last chance to clean the slate and change the narrative, this is the time, this is the moment for the light to come on. He doesn’t do himself any favors taking to Instagram and posting things such as: “you gone hurt yo own damn feelings tryna hurt mine, idgaf about nothing.”
It behooves Kadarius Toney from this day forward to: Show that you gaf about your pro career. Show that you gaf about your new head coach. Show that you gaf about the Giants. He isn’t the only 23-year-old who needs to grow up. Eli Apple never did as a Giant.
But wait, there is some good news: Toney didn’t scrub the team from his Instagram!
Showing up is just the first step.
Growing up is the giant next step.