Giants’ DC Steve Spagnuolo on criticism — “I don’t know anonymous”

New York Giants defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo was dragged into the muck of the controversy over anonymous remarks by players on Thursday when he was asked about an unnamed player apparently criticizing his play-calling.

“I don’t know anonymous. I don’t know. I don’t know,” Spagnulo said when asked about a player apparently anonymously saying the defensive coordinator was panicking during games.

Did hearing about the remark trouble him?

“Look it, no. No. We just got to move on. I can’t even worry about that. It’s anonymous, right? Was that true? Was it anonymous?,” Spagnuolo said. “We don’t know – anonymous – we don’t know if it was made up. We don’t know if it was actually said. Would that be true? So, I’m not going to comment on it. Move on.”

So, let’s do that. Let’s move on to some of the football things Spags addressed during his meeting with reporters on Thursday.

On his defense giving up 51 points to the Los Angeles Rams ...

“There’s a pit right here. It’s called an embarrassing pit. We feel terrible about that and looking to get it corrected. ... Sometimes, when it rains, it pours and starts snowballing. We were trying to patch some things together because of the injuries and what not, but that’s no excuse. I mean, we just need to play faster. I think the guys will tell you that. Make some tackles.”

On whether he saw enough effort ...

“I thought so. I thought so. You can pick out a play here and there and we track loafs all the time and we have never gone through a game and not had a couple. We do have some guys out there with some injuries and at times, I think they’re trying to save themselves. I don’t think that’s the right thing to do, but that might have happened a couple times. ... when I say ‘loaf’, we’re hard on the guys. You know what I mean? So, when it’s not full speed, we call them a loaf. That doesn’t mean a guy is walking. We need guys bursting to the ball.”

On the idea of simplifying the defense ...

“We’re always, I mean, we’re always doing that. Look it, things don’t go good. We can find all kinds of excuses. We’re always doing that. We’ll continue to do it. We’re just going to try and find the things that work for us, knowing that we have different people in there. Last year was a – we all know how blessed we were last year, to stay as healthy as we were because you can start adding pieces, you know. This year is a little bit different. So, we’ll go forward accordingly.”