Pat Leonard: Becoming a nasty team may require Giants to push limits in training camp

Pat Leonard, New York Daily News on Jul 23, 2025

Published in Football

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NEW YORK — The Giants haven’t been nasty enough. Nastiness starts on the line of scrimmage.

It’s different from toughness. Toughness is a prerequisite for these gladiators to play this violent sport.

Nastiness is more than that. It’s an attitude. It’s relentless aggressiveness for its own sake.

It’s taking a lost 1-on-1 battle, a missed block, a poor tackle or some other mistake personally — and then taking it out on the man across from you on the next snap for a win.

It’s playing with enough controlled violence that opponents fear you or, at the very least, respect you.

It’s making sure teams are never excited to play the Giants because they know they will walk off the field in worse shape than they entered it.

There are a couple potential problems with nastiness on a football team, though:

First, it’s difficult to teach if it doesn’t come naturally to the player. It either comes naturally to a competitor, or it doesn’t.

Second, playing with nastiness creates the possibility of crossing the line and hurting the team. It could lead to injury. It could create a contagious lack of discipline. It could mean penalties and loss of composure.

In those cases, it is not constructive. It does more harm than good.

That brings us to Monday’s social media banter between pass rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux and right tackle Jermaine Eluemunor, on the eve of Tuesday’s report day for Giants veterans with the first practice set for Wednesday.

Back on June 5, Thibodeaux and Eluemunor set off a melee that forced Brian Daboll to end the Giants’ sixth OTA practice.

Eluemunor blocked Thibodeaux hard down to the ground at the end of a pass rush. Thibodeaux stood up, swung and knocked the tackle’s helmet off. And both players appeared to hit each other in the head. Thibodeaux seemed to catch Eluemunor once with his helmet off.

That fight, and a brawl between pass rusher Brian Burns and left tackle James Hudson III, put a damper on the Giants’ spring work. They’d gone too far.

“You definitely need that edge, you need that dog mentality, but you can’t let it get in the way of work,” Burns said at the time.

So on Monday, Thibodeaux posted a video of an offseason workout with his wrestling coach.

Eluemunor commented: “Slow Azz single leg, I’m ankle picking this man and pinning him in the first period.”

Thibodeaux shot back: “Shut up fat boy.”

Eluemunor wrote: “I’ll see you soon”

“Better ask what happen[ed] to the last security guard,” Thibodeaux replied.

Eluemunor and Thibodeaux might have just been having some fun, trash talking and pretending they had beef. Maybe they were firing themselves up for pivotal training camp, trying to galvanize the rest of the team to follow suit.

Whatever the motivation, even if it’s contrived, having some in-house rivalries on the Giants’ line of scrimmage is honestly exciting. It could be constructive — if managed properly.

Change is uncomfortable. The Giants have some talent on their lines, but they’re not feared, outside of Dexter Lawrence on the defensive interior.

Turning up the nastiness means practicing it. It means working on playing right up to the line and sometimes crossing just over it.

It means acquiring players who already have it, too.

Reserve guard Jake Kubas is willing to get his nose dirty. Abdul Carter, the Giants’ No. 3 overall pick in the NFL draft, seems like he wants the smoke, too.

Schoen said in April that Carter plays with “motor, toughness and violence.” It doesn’t hurt that Carter plays the same position as Thibodeaux, either. Competition breeds improvement.

And if Thibodeaux’s motivation to be his best and protect his role on the team results in more chippiness with the offensive line, then Carter’s selection is serving a solid purpose before the games even begin.

Daboll needs to know how to foster more nastiness on the line of scrimmage, though, while keeping control of the players and the team.

They can’t cross the line as enemies. They can’t practice bad habits that will hurt the team in games.

They can’t lose their identity while trying to build one. They need to be unleashed within a sound structure.

None of this is easy. But this season, with Schoen and Daboll on the hot seat, the pressure that is on the GM and coach will filter down to the team and the players.

That will breed urgency, which will ratchet up the nastiness.

And that could be a great thing, as long as the Giants don’t let it consume them and drag them down.

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