Eli Apple and his mother are making headlines again after Annie Apple ripped the Giants for their poor handling of Josh Brown’s domestic violence incidents. After Eli was drafted, Annie Apple was hired as a writer for ESPN and Sports Illustrated, and has used those media platforms to publicly criticize the Giants. Annie Apple is a domestic violence survivor as well, so she did not pull any punches with her criticism of her son’s employer. Eli’s mom has every right to criticize the Giants, but it seems that the tough spot Eli has been placed in is starting to take its toll. Eli shared his feelings with the NY Post:
Eli Apple admits this is awkward, him playing for the Giants and his mother attacking his employer and accusing the team of pressuring her son to control what she says and writes.
“Yeah, because like that’s my mom, so I can’t really try to come at her at all, she’s going to check me big-time,’’ Eli Apple said. “Oh man, honestly I don’t really know how understanding she is. She’s doing her thing right now.’’
“She was a little bit upset, and I didn’t really have a chance to talk to her,’’ he said. “I guess throughout that whole thing, that’s just how she felt.
“Nobody’s leaning on me or anything, telling me things to tell her. It’s not like that at all. I think the Giants are a classy organization. I’m just happy to be here.”
Eli’s words reveal that he has great respect for his mother and would not dare tell her to stop criticizing the Giants. This puts Eli Apple into an odd love triangle that is similar to when a son’s mother does not get along with a new girlfriend or wife. On one hand, Eli loves and respects his mother and wants her to speak her mind. On the other, his employer that is paying him a lot of money to play football, may not want to deal with further distractions. Eli has to tread carefully here and he acknowledged that with the following quote:
“It’s definitely a weird position, of course,’’ he said. “You want to just focus on football and have football be your main focus. Sometimes when things like this come up it definitely makes it a little bit hard, because you’re thinking about it a little bit. Just got to move on from it, talk to her a little bit and just try to speak your mind a little bit and move forward.’’
Perhaps now that Josh Brown is no longer with the Giants and Annie Apple has eloquently voiced her disdain for how the Giants handled Brown, both sides can come to some sort of reconciliation that will allow Eli to just focus on football.