“Keep the Camera off Me”: Malik Nabers Unleashes Explosive Rant Against FOX & Greg Olsen Over Disrespectful Remarks During Giants-Eagles Clash
from Essential NFL Football/The Huddle
A 19-11 road win over Philadelphia that put the Giants on top of the NFC East wasn’t enough to erase the sting Malik Nabers after the final whistle on Sunday. The receiver who had strung together four straight 100-yard games struggled on the field, but his frustration wasn’t about his own performance.
Nabers is not happy with how FOX covered him on Sunday, and he made sure everyone knew it. After the Giants beat the Eagles, he took to his Instagram story to fire back at the broadcast team, with Greg Olsen taking the brunt of it.
“Y’all be trying to create a narrative on me so bad it’s actually crazy!! If you don’t like the way I play the game, keep the camera off me!! SIMPLE! But @gregolsen88 calling me a bad teammate when every team I’ve been on, there’s NOBODY I’ve played with has said dat bout me is crazy! My face is the same way if I’m havin a good game, bad, winning or losing. if it’s a problem. 1. Keep the camera off me. 2. Pray bout it! Simple,” Nabers wrote in his Instagram story.
Nabers was responding to a moment on the broadcast when Olsen commented on the receiver’s body language. On second-and-goal in the third quarter, Jameis Winston quickly found Isaiah Likely wide open for a touchdown. As the team came together to celebrate, Olsen didn’t like what he saw from Nabers.
“There is a very fine line between being demanding, being a competitor, and all those great things. That’s great,” Olsen said on the FOX broadcast. “It just can never cross that it feels like it takes away from the success of your teammate. So when your teammate catches a wide-open touchdown, you need to be the happiest guy on the field.”
Olsen’s criticism didn’t stop there. He also pointed to a dropped pass. On third-and-6, J.J. McCarthy threw to the end zone, and Nabers appeared to make a diving catch before the ball came loose.
“You can’t act like that and drop that pass,” Olsen said. “That’s a perfectly thrown ball.”
That touchdown would have given the Giants a comfortable 20-8 lead over the Eagles, though it was a difficult catch. After racking up 509 yards over his previous four games, Nabers had a quiet day in Philly, finishing with 43 yards on five catches, an average of 8.6 yards per reception. Even so, he hauled in five of his eight targets, including a contested catch where he collided with two Eagles defenders.
Nabers has been blunt on the field before, but does that mean he doesn’t share in his teammates’ success? Not at all. Just two weeks ago against the Texans, when a teammate scored a touchdown, Nabers was spotted jumping and laughing with head coach John Harbaugh on the sideline.
His teammates have talked about Nabers before, and it was never about him being a bad teammate. Giants veteran Darius Slayton even said last year, “I think he’s definitely done a good job of learning, but I think he’s grown probably mostly in ways that are outside the game. I think he’s grown a lot in his routine, his habits, and trying to lead when he can. He’s grown a lot in those areas, which are some of the most important ones.”
Yes, Nabers doesn’t hide his frustration with teammates or coaches when he thinks the ball isn’t coming his way. He did it last year, and he did it last week, too. But as Nabers has explained, “That just goes to show how much my teammates believe in me and they want me to do those types of things… Things get heated out there, but everything gets resolved when we have those one-on-one conversations.”
It doesn’t look any different this time. Just an hour after his post about Olsen, Nabers shared a picture celebrating rookie Arvell Reese’s historic stat line. Reese became the first rookie since 2000 to record three sacks and more than 10 tackles in a single game.
Social media aside, Nabers didn’t shy away from criticizing the team’s performance.
“I mean, we can’t come out slow in the first quarter, second quarter, and only be able to put up six points,” he said after the game. “I felt like we were just lackadaisical out there, just playing, letting the game come. And I feel like in a division game, you have to go attack people, you have to go attack the game. And I felt like we were just lollygagging our way on through the game, so I had frustration about that, trying to wake everybody up, just to make sure, you know, we’re playing a game right now. It’s not time to play [around].”
The Giants still got the win, and that’s what matters most in the standings. But the back-and-forth between Nabers and the FOX crew is now very public, and it’s hard to say how long it will keep going.