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Amid a disappointing 2024 regular season, the New York Giants decided to make a change at quarterback, officially benching starter Daniel Jones and moving Tommy DeVito up the depth chart. During a practice shortly thereafter, reporters observed Jones playing scout-team safety, and he later issued a statement to the media that listeners perceived as a goodbye message to the organization. As it turned out, Jones was granted his release from the team on the next day, but leading up to that time, there were various sentiments pertaining to the situation.
Elle Duncan, who was hosting an edition of SportsCenter on ESPN, highlighted what Jones said as part of her “Taking the Elle” segment and made several jokes about the situation. For example, she wondered why Jones was reading off a piece of paper when he had attended Duke University, a prestigious college. Moreover, she then issued a candid statement of her own that she claimed Daniel Jones should have issued instead.
The situation drew criticism from New York Giants senior vice president of communications Pat Hanlon on social media, and she also received significant backlash from fans of the team. Duncan recently addressed the situation and how it unfolded on an episode of The Elle Duncan Show with Gary Striewski, articulating that her show group is composed of several Giants fans who agreed to discuss the predicament.
“The most humbling part of this situation is thinking that people know who you are,” Duncan said. “Thinking that you have become a person that’s a big enough public figure that they sort of know your brand of humor, and realizing how unfamiliar people are with your work, because to your point, I was like, ‘Yo, this is what you’re upset with? Have you ever listened to anything I say? Have you ever heard me talk about Brian Kelly on Taking the Elle?’…. This is some of the most benign stuff that I have ever said.”
Striewski surmised that Giants fans, especially over the past week, may have felt irritable and perceived Duncan’s remarks as exacerbating an already existent wound. When she arrived at First Take the next morning, she explained that there were emails from people while not having any idea what was taking place on social media. Through these channels, she found out that the Giants organization was perturbed and spoke about Hanlon calling her statement “tone deaf” when considering everything that has happened at ESPN over the last few years. Duncan assumed that he was referring to layoffs that were mandated by The Walt Disney Company.
“As if someone losing their job as part of a layoff and having nothing to do with their actual work is akin to a man having a six-year opportunity and getting over $100 million to keep his job and being unable to keep his job,” Duncan said. “As if those things are equal. Those are false equivalencies, first of all, and I would never make light of someone getting laid off. That is completely out of their control, and that is completely unfair. That is a part of being in a business, and I know a lot of really great people that ended up losing their jobs because of ledgers. They are not the same.”
Elle Duncan then expressed that there are certain types of people always finding their way into her direct messages and mentions who inveigh their commentary towards her. In fact, she expressed that she would not listen to people who booed Daniel Jones, categorized someone as a snowflake or DM’d her saying to stick to sports or cooking. On the video edition of the show, she held up a crying emoji and said, “Here’s your sign,” to these groups of people.
“If you want to critique the timing of it; if you felt that it was a low blow and cheap shots, that is totally fine. But the second your critique starts with, ‘You DEI hire,’ you’re canceled in my mind,” Duncan said. “Your opinion is rendered irrelevant. The second you ask me, ‘Would you have said this about a Black quarterback?’ you are non contende to me. I don’t hear you or receive you, period.
“I’m never going to stop speaking my mind, and you can keep beating your head against the wall as much as you want. You’re not ever going to shut me the (expletive) up because I am paid to give my opinion in sports,” Elle Duncan continued. “It’s quite literally my job. It is not yours. Your job is to lay and wait for me to do something that you think gives leverage to open up my mentions to some of the worst people in the world, and that’s okay with me because what I do with social media is take my phone, I’d see ‘DEI hire, get your Black (expletive) back in the kitchen,’ and I just put my phone back down. You don’t exist to me, so you can keep doing this and keep trying to get me to shut up, but I’m never going to.”
