Giants say training camp brawl will unite team, not break them apart
Giants tight end Evan Engram catches a pass during training camp at the Quest Diagnostics Training Center in East Rutherford, N.J., on Tuesday. Credit: Brad Penner
Exactly one week after he shoved a teammate to the ground, took a blindside shot from another, and found himself in the middle of a massive scrum that brought practice to a premature halt and pushed coach Joe Judge to the upper limits of his rage, Evan Engram was asked if all of that was . . . helpful.
"I definitely feel that for our team, for sure," the Giants tight end said on Tuesday.
It did not take long for the dust to settle from the melee that has so far been the defining moment of this training camp. The Giants players, most of whom were involved in the fracas one way or another, quickly put it behind them. Even the principal participants — Engram, Logan Ryan, Jabrill Peppers — had moved past the incident before they even finished their punishment sprints and pushups.
"We got in the locker room and we were all laughing about it and chopping it up and talking about it," said Engram, who spoke publicly about the incident for the first time. "We’re family, man. It’s like little brothers fighting, literally that’s how it was. We got in the locker room and we made up and we had fun and we all talked it out and it was all good."
It doesn’t always work that way. Training camp fights sometimes do represent fractures in a team and dissent among the players. Judge acknowledged as much on Tuesday.
"I’ve seen that plenty of times," he said of a brawl turning things south for a team. "To me, it’s important that our guys understand that we’re all one team. It’s going to be competitive between the lines, it’s our job to push and challenge each other, but at the end of the day we’re all on the same page."
That seems to be the case for the Giants. In fact, the fight that launched a thousand hot takes (despite barely a few dozen or so eyewitnesses who were at practice that day since no footage of the brawl has been made available) might actually be a big propellant to the Giants’ season.
"I know the fight was a big deal in the media," running back Saquon Barkley said. "I mentioned it to some of the guys on this team, I do believe we will have a very special year and that’s one thing we’ll be able to point back to and say that really helped bring us together and helped push us towards the next thing, things we want to accomplish."
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.
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