New York Giants: Donald Trump statements bring out hypocrisy of ownership

The New York Giants with strong but hypocritical response to the comments by President Donald Trump.

The New York Giants and the rest of the NFL were taken back by the comments of President Donald Trump during a rally in Alabama. You have all heard them by now, he told his crowd that any NFL player that disrespects the flag should be taken off of the field immediately and fired. The comments were strong, to the point, and had no business coming out of the mouth of our leader. Nothing good could come out of doing it.

Following the rally, many NFL teams and players made statements in response, including the Giants. Take a look at the statement from owners John Mara and Steve Tisch:

These are also strong words in rebuttal. Just as the other owners that responded, they stuck up for free speech and for their players. It was politically correct. It was a strong showing of unity within the NFL community. It was also hypocritical on the part of the Giants for a couple of reasons.

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First of all, let’s look at team history. The Giants are in no position to lecture anyone about the character of NFL football players. They simply aren’t. He may have been a great player but Lawrence Taylor wasn’t exactly the picture of character. How about Plaxico Burress? He’s the one that brings firearms into night clubs. And finally, any team that willfully employed Josh Brown, knowing what he did, lost their right to lecture about character.

Let’s move on from there and take the statement at face value. The Giants support their players making a positive difference in the community. Time for a recent history lesson.

Remember when the potential of Colin Kaepernick was talked about? They had signed Geno Smith, but Kaepernick had not gotten a job yet. John Mara admitted to Jenny Vrentas of MMQB that the team NEVER EVEN TALKED ABOUT SIGNING HIM. Here’s why (via Giants Wire):

"“All my years being in the league, I never received more emotional mail from people than I did about that issue,” Mara told Jenny Vrentas of MMQB. “‘If any of your players ever do that, we are never coming to another Giants game.’ It wasn’t one or two letters. It was a lot. It’s an emotional, emotional issue for a lot of people, more so than any other issue I’ve run into.”"

So essentially the Giants are saying that they support players rights to make a difference, but just not THIS player? If the players have all of these rights to peaceful protest, why not bring in the player that started it? He certainly has had more success in the NFL than Geno Smith. That’s hypocritical.

I understand that no other team signed Colin Kaepernick either. But none of those teams directly stated the reason they won’t sign him is because of the issue that surrounds him. That’s the difference.

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This is not a judgement of the players or of the teams. Far from it actually. The players, until rules are set otherwise, have the right to do it. The point is, however, that the Giants are up front with being hypocritical on this. If you support the protesting as a team owner, it’s hypocritical to say you won’t sign a player because of his protesting. You can’t have it both ways.