The New York Giants and their prized prospect, Abdul Carter have gotten off to a rocky start in their relationship, and it's only gotten worse.
New York Giants rookie, Abdul Carter has been in the NFL for eight months, and there are significant concerns by not just his play on the field, but what comes with him off the field.
With a poor start to his professional career on the statsheet, it continued after Carter was disciplined by interim head coach Mike Kafka for missing a walk-through leading up to Week 11’s game against the Green Bay Packers.
According to Dan Duggan of The Athletic, multiple sources actually stated that Carter fell asleep during walk-throughs.
Later on social media, Carter refuted these reports saying that he was just going through recovery, but either way, being on time wasn’t Carter’s specialty.
Apparently, Carter was consistently late to meetings, and then-coach Brian Daboll had let it slide.
It’s been a tremendously disappointing season for the 2025 third overall pick, only registering 23 total tackles, one tackle for loss and only a half of a sack.
And since he’s been a Giant, it just seems like he’s been in the news for unnecessary reasons.
You may remember the whole “jersey number” controversy when he was first drafted by the Giants.
A Giants Hall of Famer granting a rookie isn’t new to the franchise, as the family of Ray Flaherty granted Malik Nabers to wear his number 1.
He had hopes to wear the number 56, a number made famous from Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor, who spent his 13-year career with the G-Men, putting it on social media and turning it into a widespread discussion.
That got turned down, and Taylor wanted to make it known that it wasn’t a “keep dreaming, kid” type of situation, but he wanted Carter to make his own name for himself.
"He has to be the player that he is," Taylor told ESPN. “He can't be another Lawrence Taylor. Well, he may be better than a Lawrence Taylor, who knows. But he has to make his mark. It's up to him… And I'm hoping that he's not thinking that, 'Oh, I got shot down by LT.' No, it isn't like that, man. It's, 'Hey, I'm with you!' I mean, I'm the guy that it takes two. I'm going to be two steps behind you and make sure you don't fall."
The same situation happened when he asked legendary Giants quarterback Phil Simms to wear his number 11, the same number he wore in college for Penn State, and Simms’ family overruled it.
It’s a situation that Carter didn’t need to make a big deal out of, but he did anyway. When you put stuff like that on social media, people are going to form an opinion on it one way or another. And instead of making it to honor legends, it felt like it was an effort to make it about himself.
Now he’s back at it, finding himself in the news because of disciplinary reasons.
Perhaps if he was doing this while performing like the Rookie of the Year, it would be easier to turn the other cheek.
But he’s not, in fact, he’s incredibly far from it. So, are these antics even worth it? It is too early to tell, but causing headaches at this point in his career is already concerning for a franchise looking to rely on him for years to come.