Former New York Giants wide receiver Kadarius Toney went from hero to zero in a matter of seconds on Sunday in one of the Kansas City Chiefs’ biggest games of the year.
Toney scored a touchdown off a lateral from Travis Kielce late in the fourth quarter, putting his team up over the Buffalo Bills. But the play was called back due to a rare offensive offsides penalty by — you guessed it — Toney.
Since there’s still bad blood over how things ended in East Rutherford, Giants Twitter had a little fun at Toney’s expense.
On Tuesday, retired Giants Amani Toomer wide receiver appeared on ESPN’s DiPietro & Rothenberg and unleashed on the 2021 first-round pick.
“I mean, he’s been a receiver for his entire life. Like, I don’t think I’ve ever, in my entire career, high school or college, lined up offsides,” Toomer said. “It’s something that just doesn’t happen. It’s a lack of detail and that’s one of the reasons he’s not on the Giants now. He’s one of those guys, he’s a coach killer.
“Kadarius Toney is going to kill you as a coach because he’s going to dazzle you with great plays now and then but then he’s going to have this bonehead play. And then the general manager is going to look down and be like, ‘Well, he’s got talent, we’ve just gotta coach him up. We’ve gotta get a better coach in there to coach him up.’ And that’s why the Giants got rid of him.
“He’s a guy that’s not focused, obviously, and the time you have to focus the most at the end of the game. That’s where the little things come into play. Are you on time in meetings? Do you care enough about details to get to where you care about details so much that they become a reflex; they become habits? He’s not that guy and for people to defend the guy for being offsides, to me, is the ultimate form of coddling somebody.”
Toomer made it clear, in his mind, there’s no controversy and that Toney — and Toney alone — should be blamed for the penalty.
“He’s a grown man. He made a grown man mistake in a big league, in a big game for everybody to see and it was on him. For everybody to be making excuses for him and, ‘Oh the referees,’ what do you want them not to call that play? I just feel like it should just be on Kadarius Toney,” Toomer said. “That should be it.
“There shouldn’t be this whole thing, ‘Why are the referees making this call?’ Because that’s what they are there to do; they are there to call penalties. Without structure in the NFL, you don’t have anything. . . . The rules are the rules. I don’t understand it. It’s really frustrating that they coddle some of these players so much.”
Toomer’s characterization of Toney is exactly what drew the Giants to part ways with him. The talent level for the former first-round pick was certainly there, but with Toney’s character, the juice was not worth the squeeze.
