Breaking News

These are the 20 best travel destinations for summer 2024, according to Google Flight Searches 3 Google Maps updates to make summer travel easier SPACECENT is up the new war zone > United States Space Force > Article Display Tuberculosis — United States, 2023 | MMWR Thousands of US bridges are vulnerable to collapse from a single hit: NTSB Why don’t the Blazers or ROOT Sports offer standalone streaming? Up to 200,000 people estimated to travel to Vermont for total solar eclipse How fast will April’s total solar eclipse travel? The UN Security Council demands a ceasefire in Gaza during Ramadan Mexico in the emerging world order

“Terrible. It’s terrible, man.”

It’s a crazy late July morning in Miami, on a sunny grass field framed by swaying palm trees. Not five minutes ago, sweaty and shirtless from a sprint workout that left his training partner hunched over a nearby trash can, Eli Apple tossed me a ball to help him “get some captures” before an interview. A few steps later, however, the Bengals cornerback abruptly shakes his head in disgust and huffs toward the sideline, ending our impromptu pitching session.

That’s when he starts telling me he thinks I stink.

“So you don’t see me coming for Burrow’s job?” I ask.

“Brandon Allen kicked your ass,” Apple spits, naming Cincinnati’s backup quarterback. Then, to emphasize how low he would fall on the depth chart, “and [running back] Joe Mixon.”

A beat skips by as Apple slumps over a metal bench, letting the burn sink in. Then he finally breaks, smiling as his tone softens. “I’m just talking s—,” he says.

Amazing, right? After all, the 27-year-old’s taste for small talk is why I’m here in the first place. Most famously, that reputation is painted on his 111,700-follower Twitter account, where an increasingly emboldened Apple burned every bridge in sight during the Bengals’ run to Super Bowl LVI last season. The hit list included beaten playoff foes like the Titans’ Julio Jones (“season on the line the man was hiding”) and the Chiefs’ Tyreek Hill (“He’s a baby! @cheetah”), along with the entire residential population. from one of Apple’s three previous NFL stops: “New Orleans is the stinkiest city and has the worst food ever 😂 it’s the pigs and crawfish that kill your brain.”

But Apple also takes the troll walk in real life. Listed at 6′ 1″ with a nearly 6′ 4 1/2″ wingspan, Apple has the size to physically harass receivers. He is also willing to verbally harangue them with his big mouth. (“I like to talk in general,” Apple says.) Those traits together have been known to shake opponents and teammates alike: As Bengals star Ja’Marr Chase told reporters during training camp: “I’m angry, yes, I’m not going to lie.”

That explains the delicious schadenfreude on offer in February when Cooper Kupp snagged the Super Bowl-winning touchdown over Apple with 1:25 remaining, sending the Rams to a 23-20 victory, and seemingly everyone else in their accounts. Social Networks. “Half of the NFL’s receivers have chosen violence,” read one headline, which described how players from the Chiefs, Ravens, Saints and others piled on punches, crying face emojis and reposts of a song viral: You were never a superstar/You should be on bars [Xanax]/Because you act like a fool…

It also explains YouTube’s corner dedicated to Apple news, where popular recent uploads include “Eli Apple Getting Burned Compilation” (160,000 views); “Eli Apple Getting Compilation Burned” (52,000); and “Scoring Eli Apple as the WORST receiver in EVERY Madden” (94,000). Then there were the many handwritten anti-Apple signs that appeared at Mardi Gras in March, like the one that had a reveler standing at a New Orleans intersection: “This corner is better than Eli Apple.”

The reality is that Apple enjoyed the best campaign of his career in 2021, leading NFL defensive backs by allowing a paltry 22.6 passer rating in man coverage, according to Pro Football Focus, and with defensive plays instrumental in consecutive postseason victories. “He did a lot to get us where we were,” Bengals defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo says. But success alone doesn’t explain the massive amount of attention a former top-10 pick-turned-jobber now in his fourth straight one-year deal.

“If Eli does something wrong, gives up a catch or whatever, the next thing, you know it’s trending on Twitter and everybody’s on it,” says Donte’ Deayon, a friend and fellow defensive lineman who met Apple when they were both rookies. with the Giants in 2016. “Not everyone has to deal with it mentally.”

Not that Apple cares. Yes, see the memes. Yes, save tweets. “I tell myself no, like, ‘Wow, this is the last time I’m going to watch this shit,’ and then I still watch it again,” he says. But where his younger self might have stewed endlessly over every little detail, letting emotion affect his job performance, today’s version claims to be “immune” to the hatred that accompanies the his heel status.

As he explains, “It’s not about getting back at these people, proving someone wrong. I don’t care about their opinion. I’m happy as a football player. I’ll keep working… [but] going through everything I go through to get to this moment, I feel like I’ve already reached the top of the mountain.”

While this year’s tweetstorms ignited new levels of brouhaha, the cornerback was already used to being a lightning rod. Look no further than what he faced before the 2016 draft, after a sophomore season at Ohio State in which he won a College Football Playoff championship, made the All–Big Ten second team and being named Buckeyes’ defensive MVP: Granted anonymity to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, an NFL scout reported that Apple, then 20, was not first-round material because, as the scout put it, “[ he has no life skills. Not at all. He can’t cook. Just a baby.”

The Giants’ controversial decision to take Apple at No. 10, second among cornerbacks behind Jalen Ramsey, did little to quell the uproar. Nor did a social media video posted by Apple’s mom, Annie, of Eli strapped into the back seat, letting loose for his first day of minicamp practice in June. “People did a lot of that,” says Deayon, who recalls that his new teammate also raised eyebrows with his reluctance to sing a song as part of a rookie ritual. “Everybody booed and booed.”

Spending time with Apple, Deayon saw firsthand how the attention, amplified by expectations the size of the Big Apple, affected him: “You could see it was weighing on him. Outside [of work], he had a little more ‘joy, he’s a little more focused, he’s studying the playbook, watching film. But then we’d get into the building and his attitude would change, because of all the external factors that were coming at him.’ The tension finally rose toward the end of Apple’s second season in 2017, with Giants safety Landon Collins publicly labeling Apple a locker room “cancer” and the team suspending Apple for the season finale for which he considered “a pattern of behavior that is harmful conduct…”.

Looking back, Apple uses a simpler phrase to describe what he felt at the time. “Shoot, basically hell, the worst part of being a football player, people criticizing me from every angle.” But he also takes credit for how he responded, attributing his suspension with the Giants to his “attack, getting out of character” and summing up that entire period as the “low” of his career. When asked what he learned from it, Apple lists the importance of “appreciating every moment, not taking things away from the field, and being a better professional.”

More “humiliating” moments were expected. The Giants traded him to New Orleans for fourth- and seventh-round picks in October 2018, the Saints subsequently declined their fifth-year player option in May ’19, and an injury stint with the Panthers ended after less five months to the end of October 20. “I re-injured the hamstring that I had been dealing with all year,” Apple says. “Then coach [Matt] Rhule tried to force me to practice [entering a Thursday night game against the Falcons in Week 8] when I got hurt. And I told him I couldn’t, and they cut down”. (A Panthers spokesperson, via email, responded: “Player health and safety is a priority for our organization. We categorically deny Eli’s allegation that we tried to force him to practice when he was injured. His release from the team was not due to injury..”)

Flying to Los Angeles to live with his mother for the rest of the season, Apple entered a period of soul-searching. “Reevaluating a lot of things, just trying to get my life right,” he says. And while he insists he didn’t allow himself to wonder if his time in the NFL was coming to an end, it took until the calendar flipped to 2021 before the phone rang with a familiar voice offering salvation. “Coach Lou was the one guy who trusted me,” Apple says. “He was able to give me a chance.”

So far, Apple has rewarded Anarumo for the trust the coach placed in him.

Kareem Elgazzar/USA Today Network

As the Giants’ defensive backs coach during Apple’s last season there, Anarumo recalls working with a “girly” cornerback who would cut the line to tackle Odell Beckham Jr. in individual drills and “didn’t back down an ounce.” ” Like Apple, Anarumo acknowledges that the cornerback “has had some growing up to do.” But it didn’t take long to convince his Bengal colleagues to take a low-risk flier at Apple on March 21, signing him to a one-year, $1.2 million deal.

“Every time you fight in this league, it instantly puts doubt in people’s minds,” says Anarumo. “[But] I just knew we could get something out of him. There’s not a lot of humans that walk as big and strong and as fast as he does, playing that position. I always thought, keep giving him a chance.”

Anarumo was far from the only supportive voice in Cincinnati’s defensive backroom, with former teammates Vonn Bell (Ohio State) and Trey Hendrickson (New Orleans) among those offering a sense of familiarity and comfort that Apple didn’t had at its previous stops. “We had great leadership, so when I got there, I was able to share some of my experiences,” Apple says. “These core people helped me a lot.” In turn, the Bengals’ faith was rewarded when Apple, despite missing most of the preseason with an injury, earned the other starting corner over Chidobe Awuzie, another teammate with who Apple says “really talked” and approached the Bengals’ entrance. opener But it wasn’t until he snagged back-to-back interceptions against the Raiders and Steelers in Weeks 11 and 12 that his confidence really took off.

“I finished the season playing really well, so I was like, ‘You know what, s—, nobody can touch me, really,'” Apple recalls, smiling at the memory. “Then I came into the playoffs with the same attitude.”

“It felt amazing, man. That’s probably why I went out on Twitter a little bit and everything: feeling that power, feeling that invincibility.”

Placing his helmet on his stand, Apple sat in the visiting locker room at Arrowhead Stadium and smoked a cigarette. It was halftime of the AFC title game in late January and the Bengals were trailing 21–10, a deficit big enough to make Apple forget about the goal-line attack that saved the touchdown that he had just done to Tyreek Hill as the second quarter ended. “I was so frustrated that I threw it on the floor and looked down,” says Apple. “I didn’t get a chance to really appreciate how big that play was until afterward.”

A week earlier, Apple had helped clinch Cincinnati’s divisional-round win over the Titans in similarly heroic fashion, deflecting a Ryan Tannehill pass with 20 seconds left in a tied game that led to an interception, the play key in Evan McPherson’s outfield setup. goal. And so when the Bengals also outlasted the Chiefs, knocking off the defending champs in overtime, Apple didn’t hold back, tweeting Kansas City’s Mecole Hardman and Hill to “Send me the number and I’ll hook you all up.” of super bowl with me”.

Apple’s touchdown save on Tyreek Hill late in the first half was a key play in the Bengals’ AFC title win.

For veteran safety Mike Thomas, who like Anarumo briefly crossed paths with Apple on the Giants in 2018 before joining Cincinnati last season, those social media shoutouts were born out of a sense of “redemption, because the Eli’s tape showed that he’s an elite corner.” Thomas adds, “Anytime you get that kind of attention and you’re on social media, you might get some attention that you’re not looking for. But that’s his personality. It’s high energy. He is physical. He wants that pressure.”

Not that many others bothered to give Apple the benefit of the doubt after Kupp, the Super Bowl MVP, beat him on a fade route into the back right corner of the end zone. “It’s a very cosmic bet, isn’t it?” says Uday Toodi, a 27-year-old lifelong Louisiana resident and Saints fan. Looking for a place near New Orleans City Park to post the Mardi Gras parade in March, Toodi and his friends came across a house displaying a banner that read, “Eli Apple Eats Walmart King Cakes “. In striking up a conversation with his creator, Toodi found common ground in a shared enemy. “With [Apple], it’s definitely personal,” Toodi says.

However, the same cannot be said for Apple in the wake of its most public failure. Turning over the film “right after the game,” Apple confirmed what went wrong against Kupp: “My power, he was too deep. He could have been more up, understand-the-situation, what-were-going -to-do-write s—.”—and blocked the rest. When asked if he was caught off guard by the flood of gleefully mocking messages from followers that followed, he replies, “Man, these people don’t me it doesn’t matter at all But it made it more interesting.”

And what about Hill, Hardman or other league mates?

“S—, they didn’t beat me, so I don’t care.”

An hour and a half or so before Apple roasted my pitching arm, I met it for the first time at 5:15 A.M. in the gymnasium of a private high school near Miami International Airport, with airplane lights twinkling overhead. With his trainer running late, Apple took over and led a friend, former Giants teammate and area native Jeremiah McKinnon, through an intense abdominal, chest and arm circuit that he had committed to to memory, calling each exercise in advance. That was impressive enough. Apple then casually revealed how much sleep he and McKinnon had gotten the night before as well.

“Where are you coming from?” I ask.

“From the cradle. We had a nice dinner, then we went to bed and I stayed awake.”

Later, Apple admits that rest is an area where it has a lot of room to grow. “I don’t have a lot of hours, so it’s something I’m still struggling with,” she says, adding that she’s downloaded several meditation and sleep apps to help promote a stronger eye. Otherwise, however, Apple feels it has reached the top of the mountain when it comes to self-care. She does yoga regularly, recovers with a weekly acupuncture session and engages her mind by reading a wide range of books (“I’m into The Alchemist right now, but really anything I can get my hands on”). If this anonymous NFL scout ever wanted to really test Apple’s culinary acumen, the all-vegan cornerback, who cut out animal products two years ago, could serve up his specialty jackfruit and bean enchiladas.

Anarumo similarly observes increased diligence in Apple’s preparation at the Bengals’ facilities. “He’s always been a good worker, but I think he’s working better now, more with a purpose,” Anarumo says, noting specifically “the way he asks questions in meetings.” But this evolution has also coincided with the emergence of the more playful side of Apple’s persona that Anarumo hardly knew from their time together in New York. “He always has guys in his corner of the locker room,” Anarumo says. “I don’t know what they’re laughing about, but he’s got them going, keeping things light.”

For Apple, who in March rejoined Cincinnati on a one-year, $3.75 million deal that Taylor called a “no-brainer” decision for the team, the source of that joy is simple. When asked what his colleagues see in the way he does business, Apple says, “They see someone who is free, who loves and appreciates every moment. Someone who understands that the game was almost taken away from him.”

So he dances in practice lines, hitting up Davido and other favorite Afrobeat artists, but also really “any song that has a good beat.” At the same time, he deflects energy from teammates like defensive tackle D.J. Reader, whose “grave” celebration encouraged Apple to enjoy themselves in less analog ways last season as Cincinnati clinched its first AFC North title since 2015.

If Reader is the Undertaker, does that make you the Keyboard Warrior?

“Yeah man, I’m the keyboard undertaker!” he laughs

While Apple doesn’t pull any punches at Twitter, it does claim to follow a bit of a conversational code with opponents. “I don’t like going out there and deliberately trying to get into somebody’s head,” he says. “I like to see the guys, just have a free conversation: How are you? What are you eating today? Your body feeling good? I know what route you’re taking here, I just know this isn’t going to work. It’s not like, ‘F– – you’. I don’t go right into it. And if they say something malicious, we can get to that.” Of course, he adds, “I know he’s only as valuable as someone who makes plays. That’s all that matters.”

When it comes to the most prolific gabbers on the other side of the ball, Apple describes division rivals Rashad Bateman of the Ravens and Chase Claypool of the Steelers as “big talkers,” along with one of the Kansas City wideouts who later the he ruined on Twitter: “I remember Hardman, he talked a lot, fa sho.” Perhaps earlier in his career Apple would have let these interactions rub off and affect his game. “It can keep you up all night, it can make you lose sleep for no reason, worrying about what other people are saying about you,” she says. Heading into his seventh season, however, “I’m in a place where it’s not even about that. You just do your job and everything s— [will] take care of itself.”

The Super Bowl winning touchdown.

Kohjiro Kinno/Sports Illustrated

A younger Apple likely would have struggled with the reaction to Kupp’s takeover, from the immediate public shaming he received on social media to the countless times the replay has flashed across his television screen: “Ho voices everywhere, man.” And later, in response to a question about who he considers the hardest receivers to cover: “Davante Adams … Tyreek Hill … of course Ja’Marr [and teammate] Tee Higgins…” — Apple cracks a wide smile as he approaches the man who burned him the best. “Cooper Kupp is a beast. Everyone knows it.”

Even with another one-year deal, he’s found a level of stability and composure he hasn’t had since entering the NFL. “Not for long, that’s what it stands for,” says Apple. “I have a lot of friends I’ve played with [who are] out of the league. So I play for them, I still live my life freely.” And in the lull before the start of its seventh season, as our chat comes to a close, that attitude comes through when I ask Apple if it has any rival fan bases currently in its sights, or ever. bye for Bengal’s opponents.

“No, I don’t have shots to do,” he replies. “I hope everyone is doing great, loving life and all. I don’t have anything for anyone.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll see you on Twitter, though. Fa sho.”

• Joe Burrow and Cincinnati’s new normal• Gabriel Taylor is the late Sean Taylor’s brother, and perhaps his successor• NFL season 272 game prediction• He kicked Vanderbilt and then things got done difficult

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *