Giants' Evan Neal: 'I've just got to play better'
DeMarcus Lawrence of the Dallas Cowboys gets past No. 73 Evan Neal to pressure Giants quarterback Daniel Jones at MetLife Stadium on September 26, 2022. Credit: Getty Images/Elsa
The Giants showcased a lot of deficiencies in Monday night’s loss to the Cowboys which have them concerned. One of the most glaring, however, does not.
Evan Neal, the team’s rookie right tackle, plodded through a horrendous performance in which he allowed three sacks to DeMarcus Lawrence in just a little over a half of play against him (Lawrence left with an injury in the third quarter) and jumped offsides on the last-gasp drive in the fourth quarter just before Daniel Jones threw the game-sealing interception.
Neal was getting confused by Dallas’ shifting fronts, not keeping good angles and getting beat on the edge, he said, but summed it all up better than he broke it all down.
“I’ve just got to play better,” Neal said sitting in front of his locker, his shoulders slumped, his typically booming voice humbled to just above a whisper. “There’s no other way to call it. I can get technical with you guys [in the media] all day long, but I just gotta play better. There’s no other way to slice it or sugarcoat it. I gotta play a better brand of football.”
Asked if he has ever played a game that poorly, Neal said: “Never.”
Then he thought about it just to make sure, cataloging all of his high school and college contests as fast as he could to make sure this wasn’t just a case of recency bias, and shook his head.
“Never.”
Now his goal is to make sure that answer becomes “never again.”
The seventh overall pick in April’s draft had gotten through his first two games largely unscathed and, as is preferable for linemen, unnoticed. There were a few missed blocks and bad reads but nothing that snowballed into the kind of primetime exposure Monday brought.
“I’ll watch the film, be critical of myself, be hard on myself, and just learn from this,” he said. “I have to use it as a learning experience so I can grow and get better.”
That was head coach Brian Daboll’s advice for Neal.
“Just keep your head up, you know, get ready to work next week,” Daboll said. “We all have days or plays that we wish we could have back. Go back and work on it and get better.”
Few in the organization doubt that type of performance will happen again, and hardly anyone who spoke in the postgame locker room believed Monday was a true showing of Neal’s potential.
“One thing about this league, bro, you’re gonna get got,” linebacker Jihad Ward said. “It’s a lesson learned for him. I don’t look at it like it’s a step down. It’s a lesson learned. It’s a blessing. So next time he plays him, he’ll see what he’s got… I hope the young man learns from it, watches film, and does what he has to do.”
Neal was hardly the only offensive lineman who struggled on Monday. The entire unit had difficulty protecting Jones from the onslaught of Cowboys defenders who racked up five sacks and 12 hits (not to mention the seven times Jones scrambled for positive yardage before taking a hit).
“It’s not good enough,” center Jon Feliciano said of the line’s overall performance.
While it will be a wince-inducing few days of film study and corrections for that group, most of them are veterans who know the process. Neal is a rookie. This is new for him.
Feliciano said he would take extra time to speak with Neal about it.
“The competitor he is and how serious he takes this, it’s going to be eating at him and we’ve got to make sure that this doesn’t cripple him going forward,’’ Feliciano said. “We’ve got to be there for him. This is just one game. A bad performance. I get it. But it’s the NFL, he’s a rookie. It’s going to happen.’’
Every lineman in the league has a similar story to tell with chagrin, Feliciano says.
Now Neal does too.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
