Tag: Amani Toomer

Giants great Amani Toomer rips Kadarius Toney: ‘He’s a coach killer’

Retired New York Giants WR Amani Toomers lit into Kansas City Chiefs WR Kadarius Toney, calling him a coddled “coach killer.”

Former New York Giants wide receiver Kadarius Toney went from hero to zero in a matter of seconds on Sunday in one of the Kansas City Chiefs’ biggest games of the year.

Toney scored a touchdown off a lateral from Travis Kielce late in the fourth quarter, putting his team up over the Buffalo Bills. But the play was called back due to a rare offensive offsides penalty by — you guessed it — Toney.

Since there’s still bad blood over how things ended in East Rutherford, Giants Twitter had a little fun at Toney’s expense.

On Tuesday, retired Giants Amani Toomer wide receiver appeared on ESPN’s DiPietro & Rothenberg and unleashed on the 2021 first-round pick.

“I mean, he’s been a receiver for his entire life. Like, I don’t think I’ve ever, in my entire career, high school or college, lined up offsides,” Toomer said. “It’s something that just doesn’t happen. It’s a lack of detail and that’s one of the reasons he’s not on the Giants now. He’s one of those guys, he’s a coach killer.

“Kadarius Toney is going to kill you as a coach because he’s going to dazzle you with great plays now and then but then he’s going to have this bonehead play. And then the general manager is going to look down and be like, ‘Well, he’s got talent, we’ve just gotta coach him up. We’ve gotta get a better coach in there to coach him up.’ And that’s why the Giants got rid of him.

“He’s a guy that’s not focused, obviously, and the time you have to focus the most at the end of the game. That’s where the little things come into play. Are you on time in meetings? Do you care enough about details to get to where you care about details so much that they become a reflex; they become habits? He’s not that guy and for people to defend the guy for being offsides, to me, is the ultimate form of coddling somebody.”

Toomer made it clear, in his mind, there’s no controversy and that Toney — and Toney alone — should be blamed for the penalty.

“He’s a grown man. He made a grown man mistake in a big league, in a big game for everybody to see and it was on him. For everybody to be making excuses for him and, ‘Oh the referees,’ what do you want them not to call that play? I just feel like it should just be on Kadarius Toney,” Toomer said. “That should be it.

“There shouldn’t be this whole thing, ‘Why are the referees making this call?’ Because that’s what they are there to do; they are there to call penalties. Without structure in the NFL, you don’t have anything. . . . The rules are the rules. I don’t understand it. It’s really frustrating that they coddle some of these players so much.”

Toomer’s characterization of Toney is exactly what drew the Giants to part ways with him. The talent level for the former first-round pick was certainly there, but with Toney’s character, the juice was not worth the squeeze.

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Amani Toomer recalls playing alongside ‘selfish’ Giants quarterback

Amani Toomer played alongside 10 quarterbacks during his New York Giants career and says one of them — a Hall of Famer — was selfish.

Retired New York Giants wide receiver Amani Toomer played alongside 10 quarterbacks during his 13-year NFL career and has nothing but good things to say about most of them.

One of them, however, was quite selfish in Toomer’s eyes.

During a Thursday appearance on The Michael Kay Show, Toomer was discussing the regression of current Giants quarterback Daniel Jones and suggested that outside pressure over a lack of stats had gotten to him.

Toomer said it was not the first time he had seen a quarterback become infatuated with stats and told a story about how one of his former teammates wouldn’t risk it for the biscuit.

“I have played with a quarterback who wouldn’t throw Hail Marys at the end of a half because he was concerned about his overall quarterback rating — if the Hail Mary would be intercepted,” Toomer said, via NJ Advance Media.

“I’m not going to say any names. I’m just going to say he’s in the Hall of Fame right now.”

While Toomer refused to name the quarterback, it wasn’t difficult to deduce. Although Eli Manning is likely headed to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he’s not there yet. And that leaves just one player: Kurt Warner.

Asked point-blank if it was Warner, Toomer chuckled.

“I can neither confirm nor deny,” he said.

Warner spent just one season with the Giants (2004), appearing in 10 games before being benched in favor of the aforementioned Manning. He completed 62.8% of his passes that year for 2,054 yards, six touchdowns and four interceptions.

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Throwback Thursday: Giants win shootout with Colts in 2002

On the backs of Kerry Collins and Amani Toomer, the New York Giants out-gunned Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts in 2002.

The New York Giants and the Baltimore/Indianapolis Colts franchise haven’t played very often in their histories, but when they do, it’s usually an occasion.

In 2002, the Giants headed into their Week 16 game against the 9-6 Colts at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis with an 8-6 record and needed to keep rolling in order to qualify for the playoffs.

The game pitted the Giants against a powerful Colts offense that sported such notables as quarterback Peyton Manning, running back Edgerrin James and wide receivers Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne.

Big Blue would counter with their own stars: QB Kerry Collins, RB Tiki Barber, tight end Jeremy Shockey and WR Amani Toomer.

The game was the shootout most expected, but not until after the Giants jumped out to a 30-6 lead in the third quarter. The Giants rode a blocked punt and an interception to a quick 10-0 lead and an 82-yard flea flicker to Toomer extended the lead to 17-3.

The closest the Colts would get was 37-27 with 4:44 left on a Manning-to-Wayne 40-yard strike. The Giants would answer with a 27-yard Collins-to-Toomer hookup to close things out, 44-27.

Collins would top Manning in yardage through the air, 366-365, on 23-of-29 passing with four touchdowns to Manning’s three.

The Giants held James to just 13 yards rushing, while Barber ran for 60 and had two scores. Shockey caught seven passes for 116 yards, but it was Toomer who stole the show, grabbing 10 of 12 targets for 204 yards and three touchdowns.

Toomer’s 204 yards receiving was the third-highest ever by a Giant in a single game at the time. Del Shofner had 269 yards against Washington in 1962 and Gene Roberts had 212 in a 1949 game against Green Bay.

The mark has since been tied by Plaxico Burress (204 in 2005 against the Rams) and eclipsed by Odell Beckham Jr. (222 vs. Baltimore in 2016).

The victory moved the Giants to 9-6 on the season. They needed just a win over the Philadelphia Eagles the next week to clinch a playoff spot, which they picked up.

“It’s going to come down to the final straws, and we don’t need to get sweaty palms,” Giants head coach Jim Fassel said. “We need to just get ready to go out and play another football game.”

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Flashback Friday: Panthers dominate Giants to end Jim Fassel’s tenure

In the latest Giants Wire Flashback Friday, we head to 2003 when the Carolina Panthers dropped the New York Giants to end the Jim Fassel era.

The Jim Fassel era in New York Giants history is littered with highs and lows. Fassel, who took the Giants to the playoff three times and the Super Bowl once, was so revered by the team that when they fired him in mid-December of 2003, they let him coach the team for the remaining two games of the season.

The final game that year was against the surging Carolina Panthers, coached by Fassel’s former defensive coordinator, John Fox. The Panthers came into Giants Stadium on the Sunday after Christmas with a 10-5 record and headed towards the Super Bowl.

Fassel’s team was 4-11 and had lost seven straight games. His team wanted him to go out with win. They sure didn’t show it.

The Panthers took an early 20-0 lead on Steve Smith’s 53-yard punt return, a 27-yards interception return for a touchdown by Ricky Manning Jr. and field goals of 42, 33 and 34 yards from John Kasay. The Giants could not recover and lost miserably, 37-24, in Jesse Palmer’s third and final start as their quarterback.

The loss wasn’t the story, however. That belonged to Fassel and his weird, but sad, farewell. Fox felt for his friend and the two hugged on the field after the game.

“I spent the very first moment with him when he was hired and the very last,” said Fox. “I feel proud to have been associated with him. He has a lot to be proud of, as I told him.”

After the game, Fassel was greeted by throng of about 200 of the Giant faithful in the end zone to wish him well. The players all hugged and praised him after the game as well.

“It’s definitely a sad feeling,” said Giants receiver Amani Toomer. “I wish we could have given him a win. A lot of things happened this year. It’s kind of a relief to have it over. We wish it didn’t happen the way it did.”

Unfortunately, winning is what counts. Fassel’s 58-53-1 record over seven years wasn’t bad but the eight-game losing streak to kill another season was too much for ownership to bear. It was the first Giants team to finish the season with eight consecutive defeats since 1966, the worst season in franchise history (1-12-1).

“I feel maybe it is a better place than when I came in,” Fassel said. ” I know a lot of the older players have said that to me and that has stuck with me a lot.”

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Amani Toomer will announce Giants’ third-round pick

Retired New York Giants great, Amani Toomer, will announce the team’s third-round pick in the 2022 NFL draft.

When the New York Giants make their third-round pick (67th overall) in the 2022 NFL draft, the team’s all-time leading receiver, Amani Toomer, will be announce the choice.

Big Blue’s first pick (5th overall) was also announced by a special guest on Thursday night when Make-A-Wish recipient, Sam Prince, revealed the Giants’ selection of Kayvon Thibodeaux.

 

Toomer was, of course, a member of the Giants during the 2007-2008 run to Super Bowl XLII and remains the team’s all-time leading receiver. An accolade that many expected Odell Beckham Jr. to take given his first couple of the years in the league. But with Beckham gone, Toomer’s spot as the franchise’s leading receiver is safe for now.

Toomer was selected in the second round of the 1996 draft and was one of the more reliable and consistent players during his career with the Giants. And now it come’s full circle as Toomer will be announcing Big Blue’s third-rounder.

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Amani Toomer rips Giants’ ‘lacking’ wide receivers

Amani Toomer ripped the New York Giants and their “lacking” wide receivers, with a specific criticism of Sterling Shepard.

When we here at Giants Wire pointed out that the New York Giants failed to address one of their most glaring needs in this year’s NFL Draft, we were met with a ton of resistance.

Yet here we are six weeks later and our analysis is becoming the consensual thinking.

“The Giants did not use any of their 10 draft picks this year on receivers, so they clearly did not view this position as an area of great need,” writes NY Post Giants beat reporter Paul Schwartz. “Some disagree with that view.”

Correct. We were quick to mention that the Giants failed to draft a wide receiver in one the most prolific wide receiver classes in recent memory. It is a common thread since Dave Gettleman took over as general manager,  consistently drafting against the draft grain.

The Giants have invested heavily in Sterling Shepard and veteran Golden Tate and are high on second-year player Darius Slayton, but most teams for five and six players deep at wide receiver these days.

Amani Toomer, the Giants’ all-time leading receiver, believes the Giants missed the boat and is not sold on the team’s thinking that the current group of wideouts is sufficient enough to get the job done in this day and age of high-powered offenses.

“I think it’s lacking,” Toomer told The Post recently.

“I’m a little disappointed with Shepard, I don’t know. My dad always used to tell me, ‘He’s hell when he’s well, he’s just sick all the time.’ That’s what I think when I think of him. He’s just always, there’s always something hurt, or something.

“I think Golden Tate is just a tougher version of him. Basically they’re the same receiver, but Golden Tate is a tougher version of him.”

Toomer is impressed with Slayton, however.

Slayton, a fifth-round draft pick out of Auburn last year, led the team with eight receiving touchdowns.

“I think he’s the guy what has the most upside,” Toomer said.

Of course he is. Shepard suffered two concussions last season and Tate is 32.

That aside, Toomer is still puzzled by the Giants’ decision to part ways with Odell Beckham Jr. last spring.

“I’m still confused on why they got rid of Odell,” he said. “Really confused. And every time I ask somebody in the office, it’s like, ‘Well, it was a fit thing’ and all this nebulous, circumstantial stuff. Or, ‘Oh he wasn’t a good fit in the locker room.’ But everybody I talked to loved him. Even the trainers all loved him. So I don’t know.

“They went from having a strength to now it’s a position where they need something else.”

Unless one of the many unsung players on their roster or one of the UDFAs they inked after the draft becomes the next Victor Cruz, the Giants could be undermanned at wide receiver in a league that’s beefing up on them.

Philadelphia took a wide receiver (Jalen Reagor of TCU) in the first round this year. So did Dallas (Oklahoma’s CeeDee Lamb), while the Giants were playing catch-up taking offensive linemen they should have been flush with for years had they run their drafts correctly.

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2008 Giants still tormented by what could have been

Members of the 2008 New York Giants are still tormented by what could have been more than a decade later.

When looking back on some of the greatest teams ever assembled, it’s easy to forget about the 2008 New York Giants. After all, they finished the regular season with a modest 12-4 record and were embarrassed by the Philadelphia Eagles in the divisional round of the playoffs.

Still, players from that team are tormented by what could have been…

Following a Super Bowl XLII victory over the New England Patriots a year prior, the Giants started the 2008 as hot as any team in history, cruising to an 10-1 start that featured dominating win after dominating win.

“That year, I tell people all the time, was the most fun I’ve ever had playing football in my entire life,” retired center Shaun O’Hara told the New York Post. “That year we literally kicked the snot out of people. I couldn’t wait to get to the stadium on Sunday, on game day, because we were that good.

“It wasn’t like we were airing it out, either. We’re gonna run the football. They knew it, we knew it, and there was nothing they could do about it. I know we won the Super Bowl the year before but we were a better team in 2008, we were a better offense in 2008 than we were in 2007. It was by far the best team I’d ever been on.”

Entering November, the Giants had hit their stride. They felt it was a mere formality that they would become back-to-back champions and had no intention of taking their foot off the gas.

“I think that was the best team we had,” wide receiver Amani Toomer said.

“Back-to-back,” running back Brandon Jacobs also told The Post. “We were easily better than every team in the NFL that year. Easily. I’m talking about a touchdown, I’m talking about 10 points better than everybody.”

But then everything changed…

Just prior to a Week 13 game against the Washington Redskins, superstar wide receiver Plaxico Burress accidentally shot himself in the leg with an illegal handgun while he and teammates were out at a club. He was rushed to the hospital and later sentenced to prison time.

That series of events was obviously more involved, but everyone knows that story. What they forget is that the Giants were cruising — they were unbeatable following a Week 4 loss to the Cleveland Browns.

That is, until Burress had his accident and everything fell apart.

“I think about it every year around the Super Bowl, because everyone talks about how tough it is to go back-to-back and had we won that year people would have started saying the [dynasty] word,” O’Hara said. “That’s how things would have changed. Who knows the trajectory of the franchise, how different that would have been for everybody?

“We still were a good team, but when we struggled to run the football or teams found ways to stuff us a little bit we really lost that go-to guy in the passing game. That kind of made us one-dimensional at times.”

“I thought if Plaxico didn’t shoot himself, we were the best team in the NFL that year,” defensive end Justin Tuck said.

Following a 20-19 Week 17 loss to the Minnesota Vikings, several Giants player recognized that the window of opportunity had closed. The team had resigned itself to losing.

“I think going into the playoffs on a loss like that was totally different than going to play us after a hard-fought loss against the Patriots the year before,” Toomer said. “I felt like we didn’t learn from what made us great the year before. I felt aside from Plaxico shooting himself, I think we dropped the ball in a sense, we took our finger off of the trigger and kind of let up. It’s hard to turn it on and off, especially at that point we had played so much football, we had the No. 1 seed, but still, you can’t let up. I felt we let up.”

In the end, the Pittsburgh Steelers topped the Arizona Cardinals to win the Super Bowl that year, which didn’t make the Giants any less sour. After all, they had dominated each of those teams during the regular season.

“Two teams we kicked the snot out of during the regular season,” O’Hara said of Super Bowl XLIII. “If we had beat Philly, the Cardinals would have had to come up and play us at MetLife, that would have been a disaster for that offense and Kurt Warner. If we had gotten past Philly, I have no doubt we would have beaten Arizona. And we would have beaten Pittsburgh.”

“That was our best team,” former offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride said. “There’s no doubt about it. We were good in every aspect. I think we could have won. Whether you do win or don’t win, who knows? But we showed we were good enough to win another Super Bowl, I don’t think there was any question about that.”

It’s draining to think about what could have been for the franchise — what Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning’s legacy might have looked like if things didn’t go off the rails.

Where would Domenik Hixon’s career have gone? How different could life have been for Burress?

Unfortunately, all that remains are the what ifs.

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Astounding records for players on each of the 32 NFL teams

A look at some of the remarkable individual marks held play players for all 32 NFL teams.

Plenty of players have individual records for teams. However, only some are far and away going to stand the test of time.

Arizona Cardinals

Allsport

Ernie Nevers scored an NFL record 40 points (6 TDs and 4 PATs) vs. the Chicago Bears, 11/28/29.

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Amani Toomer is not sold on Giants QB Daniel Jones

Retired New York Giants WR Amani Toomer is one of the few not sold on QB Daniel Jones: ‘I just don’t know what we have in him.’

Most current and former members of the New York Giants are outwardly excited about the potential of quarterback Daniel Jones. Some have even gone on record claiming he could become the next big thing (we’re looking at you, Saquon).

Retired Giants wide receiver Amani Toomer is not one of those people.

A rare outlier, Toomer told Radio.com’s “Home & Home” on Thursday that he simply doesn’t know what the Giants have in Jones.

“I just don’t know what we have in him,” Toomer said. “He had a couple good games early, but most quarterbacks when they get their first start they’re going to succeed because nobody has the book on them. They don’t know what they’re gonna do, don’t know what they like, what they don’t like; basically they’re playing honest.

“But more film, more defenses are allowed to cheat and take away tendencies, and that’s when usually quarterbacks will have four good games and all of a sudden go in the tank.”

Jones had the typical ups and downs of a rookie quarterback, pulling off a remarkable comeback in his first game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers only to suffer a much uglier fate in several mid-season games. Turnovers became the big story, but Toomer believes his injury (sprained ankle) may be a larger red flag.

“I think he had some resurgence toward the end of the season, the injury situation he got with his ankle, you just don’t know,” Toomer said. “Giants quarterbacks aren’t used to being hurt. We had Kerry Collins and Eli Manning. None of those guys were hurt for that long and none of them missed that many snaps. Over the last 20 years there hasn’t been a lot of [Giants] quarterbacks missing snaps because injuries.”

Jones likely could have returned early from his injury, but the Giants seemed determined to give Eli Manning a final home goodbye. That proved to be the correct decision because Manning helped lead the Giants to victory in that game and later admitted it helped his decision to retire, which avoided a potentially ugly separation.

As far as Jones, he finished the season with more touchdown passes than any other rookie quarterback, which was an overlooked statistic because of the turnovers. Still, that was not enough to sell Toomer. At least not yet.

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