Giants fans may have just watched the final chapter of Eli Apple’s NFL career get written over the weekend.
The San Francisco 49ers moved on from the soon-to-be 31-year-old, releasing him to clear space for training camp additions Khalil Herbert and Titus Leo. Apple had appeared in only two games for San Francisco last season, and the cut fits a bleak pattern that has followed him for years.
For the New York Giants, the news hits a familiar nerve. Apple was the 10th overall pick in the 2016 NFL Draft, the kind of selection that was supposed to solve a problem for a decade. Instead, it became one of the franchise’s most painful whiffs, a top-10 corner who never came close to living up to the billing.
That draft night already had New York on edge. The Tennessee Titans jumped up to take offensive tackle Jack Conklin at No. 8, then the Chicago Bears moved ahead of the Giants to grab linebacker Leonard Floyd at No.
- With Laremy Tunsil’s draft-night video also blowing up at the worst possible moment, then-general manager Jerry Reese wound up making a choice that looked, at the time, like a panic move.
He took Apple at No. 10, and the pick quickly turned into a disaster.
Apple’s Giants run unraveled fast. His time in East Rutherford came with public family drama, a suspension for conduct detrimental to the team, and teammates calling him a "cancer." By his third season, the Giants had seen enough and sent him to the New Orleans Saints.
What followed was a long, odd NFL detour. Apple has played for seven teams in 10 years: the Giants, Saints, Panthers, Bengals, Dolphins, Chargers, and 49ers. He even started in a Super Bowl for Cincinnati, but the coverage breakdowns kept piling up, and opposing fan bases took aim at him with the “burnt toast” label after he allowed Cooper Kupp’s game-winning touchdown.
The latest release only reinforces how far his stock has fallen. Apple played four games for the Chargers in 2024 and barely saw the field for San Francisco last season. Teams are no longer biting on a veteran corner who offers little special teams value and comes with a long track record of coverage issues.
For Apple, who once blamed the New York media and sparred with Giants fans, the end feels brutally simple now. The former 10th overall pick was supposed to anchor the secondary. Instead, he may go down as one of the biggest draft busts in Giants history, with his last NFL snap possibly already behind him.
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Harbaugh came in with a reputation for demanding order and attention to detail, and the Giants had reason to hope that sharper practices would clean up one of their old irritants. Instead, the penalty problem has shown up again right away, leaving an early camp issue that runs directly against the tone this staff wants to set and giving the team another item to sort through before the pace picks up. [Read more 🡒]