LANDOVER, Md. — He was on the FedEx Field sidelines on Sunday night, cheering on his Giants against the Commanders, counting the hours and days until he’s cleared by doctors to chase the primary playoff berth of his three NFL seasons.
“I feel like I’m pretty close … I believe I’m ready physically … my condition is great,” Xavier McKinney told The Post. “It’s a matter of time, just getting the hand back just so I can at the least get it within the forged. In order that’s what we’re working towards.”
McKinney was placed on the non-football injury list on Nov. 7 following a freak ATV accident in Cabo San Lucas in the course of the bye week that required fingers on his left hand to be surgically repaired.
I asked him: Is there any probability you’ll be back for Saturday’s Vikings game?
“There’s a probability,” McKinney said Friday. “I gotta get a CT scan next week, so we’ll see. When you were to talk over with the docs, the day before, and the day after I got my surgery, I used to be calling them like, ‘Hey, put me on the sector as soon as that is over.’ I desired to forged it up even with the pins in there. If it was as much as me, I woulda been back on the sector.”
He’s a natural-born leader and playmaker, a captain who wore the green dot and played every snap, and he has been missed dearly in the course of the Giants’ slide.
And he has missed his first meaningful December since Alabama dearly.
It wasn’t only the hand that needed healing originally.
“I ain’t gonna get into how much, however it was quite a bit that wasn’t seen, quite a bit that I ain’t really discuss,” McKinney said. “It was quite a bit, but I pushed through it. That’s the fantastic thing about life; it’s ups and downs. You only gotta have the option to simply kinda work around different obstacles. All the pieces will not be at all times gonna be good, so that you gotta learn methods to determine a method to figure it out. And that’s what I did.
“And that’s why I’ve been with my team, that’s why I’ve been in meetings, that’s why been doing walk-throughs, been on the games … it’s only a way for me to figure it out, and I’ve been doing a superb job of that.”
I asked McKinney if any a part of him was upset with himself.
“Nah, probably not,” he said. “The incident that happened: It was so freakish; it coulda happened to anybody. I might have been driving, and I coulda got right into a wreck. Someone coulda hit me. It’s a variety of various things that would occur, so it’s what it’s, and just move past it.”
But moving past it is less complicated said than done for True Blue Giants.
“Knowing that I wasn’t gonna have the option to play with my team for nevertheless many weeks, that was the largest thing for me,” McKinney said. “Just ’cause I knew how much we had built, just dating back all of the method to OTAs, to camp, knowing what we built as a team, as a bunch, as a corporation as an entire, that part was tough for me.”
The Giants were 6-2 once they lost McKinney. It will not be lost on him that the Giants were 6-10 and 4-13 in his first two NFL seasons under Joe Judge. He was certainly one of the young rising stars helping change the culture and bringing the Giants back.
“That’s what hurt me probably the most,” McKinney said, “simply because I do know I’ve been an element of that. It was a lotta … only a lotta different thoughts going through my head. Things occur, and just gotta figure a method to get past it.”
Members of the family helped him figure a method to get past it.
“But a variety of times, truthfully, I could take care of a variety of things alone. … I’ve been pretty good with that just about my whole life,” McKinney said. “Kinda just sitting back and gathering all my thoughts, kinda take into consideration what I could do going forward, and the way I can recover. After which work from there. I don’t dwell an excessive amount of on things. I do know I gotta keep going, I gotta keep working, that’s kinda how I’m, that’s how I’ve been all my life, with football that’s how I’m.”
McKinney knew he needed to intercept Woe Is Me as quickly as possible.
“I knew that my team still needed me, I knew my coaches still needed me,” McKinney said, “so just kinda let it breeze by and keep going.”
McKinney fractured his foot in his rookie training camp and played only the last six games of the season.
“Any injury sucks,” he said.
Defensive coordinator Wink Martindale is understandably desperate to welcome back McKinney and Adoree’ Jackson.
“I ain’t never been around a DC that was at all times in attack mindset irrespective of what,” McKinney said.
Julian Love has worn the green dot during McKinney’s absence.
“I knew there was not gonna be no falloff,” McKinney said. “He’s an incredible captain for this team, great leader for this team. No one was fearful about that a part of it.”
Nobody could have imagined the Giants in a playoff race in Yr 1 of a rebuild under rookie head coach Brian Daboll.
“He’s so transparent with everybody,” McKinney said. “He’s a very good dude simply to be around. You can talk over with him about whatever. He listens. He’s a players’ coach, and we love him. Whenever you got a pacesetter like that, it’s at all times easy to follow his lead and go on the market and play for him.”
Soon, and never a minute too soon, finally, Xavier McKinney can be back playing for Daboll and the Giants.