New York Giants running back Rashad Jennings apologized Wednesday for his remarks after the Giants season-opening loss on Sunday night to the Dallas Cowboys, wherein he explained to reporters that he was actually told by Giants quarterback Eli Manning not to score during the team's final offensive possession.
"First of all, let me say that I want to apologize from my heart for the negative light that I unintentionally cast my quarterback and friend Eli Manning in," Jennings wrote in a personal column penned on the New York Post website. "I continue to have the utmost respect for him, and I have complete trust in his leadership. It is a strange and unwelcome feeling I have that after all these years as a professional football player, I finally get to experience the other side of how words can be misconstrued."
The Giants held the ball inside the five-yard line late Sunday night with a fresh set of downs and the last two minutes of the game ticking off the clock. Two Jennings runs and an incomplete Manning pass on third down led to a Josh Brown field goal and short-lived Giants lead as Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo then led Dallas on a lightning fast march down the field to a touchdown and victory. Jennings revealed after the game that he was actually told by Manning not to score on his first and second-down runs. Manning admitted that Jennings' assertion was correct and that he had made a mistake determining how many timeouts the Cowboys had left.
A Cowboys offside penalty on the previous third down negated the timeout Dallas tried to use, meaning they still had their full complement of clock-stoppers. The Giants then exacerbated the situation by throwing on third down, stopping the clock for the Cowboys on Manning's incomplete pass. Despite Manning's blunder on the field, Jennings' media faux pas afterwards was likely just as egregious in the eyes of the New York coaching staff. Jennings did his best to walk back his remarks via his column.
"As soon as I got word of the headlines, I called Eli, and before I could even begin to apologize, he basically expressed his understanding," Jennings wrote. "Being the humble guy that he is, he wanted us to put this fiasco behind us with no hard feelings so that we could focus on the Falcons. That is why I am taking this opportunity to more formalize my apology to Eli, the team and the fans.
"I also have apologized to Coach [Tom] Coughlin."
Jennings sounds very much like a journeyman running back who knows that he's lucky to be the lead back for a Giants offense that is fueled by Manning and would go on scoring points even without him in the lineup and that he's best to keep his mouth shut on matters such as this from here on out.
While it's only one game and one remark, it's probably not in Jennings' best interest to, via the media no less, pin a heartbreaking season-opening loss on the quarterback who has been the face of the franchise for a decade-plus. Luckily for him, Manning and Coughlin seem to be taking it in stride.
