Past and present Eagles players are talking about what their head coach, Doug Pederson, did Sunday night, making quarterback Jalen Hurts for Nate Sudfeld, compromising his team’s chance of beating Washington. The Giants players are talking about what their head coach, Joe Judge, said in response to Pederson’s taunts, which helped cost the Giants a shot in the playoffs.
“I think it was a fantastic message from the coach’s judge,” defender Blake Martinez said Tuesday. “It simply came to our notice then. Always competing, always ready to play, always putting us in the right position to win games. I think it was just an amazing way to do it. ”
The referee, without mentioning the Eagles or Pederson, said Monday: “Respect the effort everyone made to make this season a success for the National Football League, not respecting the game coming out here and not competing for “60 minutes and doing everything you can to help these players win. We will never do that as long as he is the head coach of the New York Giants.”
As he watched the Eagles fall to Washington 20-14, eliminating the Giants from the postseason, cornerback James Bradberry said something stood out to him more than Pederson’s switcheroo quarterback.
“The Eagles defense played really well,” Bradberry said. “It seemed to me that the Eagles’ offensive was not really doing it. Of course, they made that late quarterback change in the fourth quarter. But watching the whole game didn’t really challenge the coaches ’decisions and things, I was just impressed by the Eagles’ good defense game. The game was very close, they weren’t playing for anything and I’ve already been in that situation, so I know how things can be as a player. So I was glad they were playing hard. ”
The safety of rookie Xavier McKinney intercepted the game in the final seconds of the final win against the Cowboys season and then unveiled an old tweet from Fox Sports jumper and Cowboys fan Skip Bayless .
“Yeah, man, I didn’t even get to see it when he first said it, and I saw it, someone mentioned it to me, probably a couple of days ago,” McKinney said. “So I had a little bit in the bag a little bit, trying to play with it a little bit.”
Bayless, on April 24, took to Twitter to post his thoughts on the Giants taking on McKinney with the No. 36 pick in the draft: “I’m glad the Giants took Bama’s safety, Xavier McKinney, no I wanted the Cowboys to take over. ”
McKinney shortly after getting his first interception in the NFL to eliminate the Cowboys from the playoffs replied a tweet to Bayless: “Happy New Year’s Eve” with an winking emoji.
The judge said as soon as he saw the interception and saw McKinney pounce on his first reaction it was to “stay in the damn final zone.” McKinney admitted that was not his first thought.
“In college, I remember I took one and it was in the end zone, it was the end of the game, and it looked like that same stage, and in college, I took the interception and got on my knees,” McKinney said. dit. “Everyone was saying,‘ Man, you have to run out. ’So when I got this one, as soon as I grabbed it, my first instinct was to go, because honestly I was just trying to take the distance, but I listened. and Logan [Ryan]I heard Logan telling me to go down and as soon as I heard it, I just slipped in and was happy with the end result we got with that. “