Logan Ryan’s retaliatory hit on Evan Engram was the final spark that ignited a brawl at Giants training camp on Tuesday, one that led a livid head coach Joe Judge to make the team do an intense set of shuttle runs and calisthenics before admonishing the entire squad on his own for 10 minutes.
So, after it was over, what was the first thing Ryan said to Engram?
“What do you want to get for lunch,” Ryan told the media Tuesday afternoon, per SNY’s Ralph Vacchiano. “We’re great, man. It’s football. It’s a physical sport. If you’re not tough or chippy I don’t know if you can play this game. Me, Evan, we’re locker buddies. We’ll be fine. This is a football team. Practice gets physical and chippy, but everything gets left between the lines.”
The brawl started when Ryan hit Engram from behind, after Engram retaliated on a defender for hitting running back Corey Clement late. However, after the whole incident, there seemed to be no hard feelings on either side.
“Football is a great sport because even when you take some blows it brings us together as a family,” Clement said. “It doesn’t carry over. We all understand the nature of the game. You get hit, you’ve got to get right back up. If you don’t want to be a part of it, you can’t cry about it.”
One thing Judge and the Giants surely didn’t want was Daniel Jones ending up at the bottom of the pile, which is unfortunately what happened – but Jones is okay, and the Giants’ psyche is, too.
“As soon as it was over we were back to laughing and jokes,” Clement said. “You’d be surprised, that what you see out here is not what we give each other once we get back in there. It’s all a family. We all understand certain things happen, but you can’t let it linger on because that’s not how you win games.”
Just another day at camp, one for a team that finished 6-10 last season and nearly won the NFC East, but knows it can, and has to be, much better in 2021.
“Everyone here – players, fans – are tired of losing games. Management gave us a better roster, and we’re competing; we 100 percent have respect for each other, but we’re going to protect our sides and we’re going to compete,” Ryan said. “If our nucleus, our key veterans, are together, the locker room will follow. Just like this team in the past – you don’t think they had chippiness or griminess about them? We’re leaving it within the lines, but I’ll take a team like that every single day.”
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