Revenge Game? Must-Win? Packers’ Xavier McKinney Ready for Giants

GREEN BAY, Wis. – After spending his first four seasons with the New York Giants, the Green Bay Packers wanted Xavier McKinney. The Giants did not.

On Sunday, McKinney – the Packers’ first-team All-Pro safety – will lead a powerhouse defense into a matchup against the Giants.

Are there any extra emotions as he gets ready to face his former team?

“Nah, not really. I don’t get into all that,” he said. “I just try to go out there and play a good game, regardless of who I’m playing, try and go out there and be productive and be the player that I know I am.

“It’d be fun just to be back in the city, though, and get to see a lot of old faces and familiar faces. But it should be fun, though. This is my first time playing the Giants since I been gone, so I’m definitely (going to) be juiced up, but it’s all out of good intention and just looking to have a good game.”

Revenge game? Perhaps not, though McKinney flashed a huge smile when asked if he’d love to make a couple big plays just to stick it to his former team. While the Giants fired coach Brian Daboll this week, they’re still led by the general manager who let him go in free agency in 2024, Joe Schoen.

More than anything this week, McKinney wants to win. The Packers are coming off back-to-back losses at home to the Carolina Panthers and Philadelphia Eagles. While the McKinney-led defense did its part, the paltry 26 points allowed in those games was too many.

“We just got to be better,” McKinney said in looking at the big picture of the team through nine games. “Think that’s pretty much the consensus of everything. I think as a whole – obviously, we going to win as a team, we going to lose as a team and, right now, we got two back-to-back Ls. So, we got to figure out how to turn it around as a team and get a win.”

New York Giants safety Xavier McKinney (29) reacts before the game against Green Bay Packers in 2023. | Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

Time is of the essence. At 5-3-1 and in jeopardy of falling out of the playoff race, this isn’t just an important game.

“I think it’s a must win,” he said. “I think we’ve put ourselves kind of in a sticky situation, but it is what it is. Things happen. Obviously, things don’t go always as planned that you want it to go sometimes, but you got to make do (with) the circumstances that you have and the type of environment that it is, so that’s just what it is.”

The Packers could be 9-0 if they had made some key plays. There were special-teams debacles in the Week 3 loss at Cleveland and the Week 4 tie at Dallas. There was a missed field goal and a couple costly turnovers against Carolina. The offense was downright terrible against the Eagles, though the Packers had a chance to at least force overtime, anyway, because their defense was so dominant.

It would be easy for the defense, which ranks seventh in points allowed and in the top 10 in almost every key metric, to get frustrated, point fingers and play the blame game.

That’s not happening, though. Rather than being divided, hard times should bring the team together, McKinney said.

The Packers have a “good-ass team,” McKinney said, and that will show up during the second half of the season.

“We don’t go through OTAs and we don’t do all the running and all the lifting and everything we do inside the building and even outside the building, we don’t do all that stuff for no reason,” he said.

“We do that to build with each other. We do that so when we do have hard moments that we face and the adversities that we face, we’re able to come closer. Each man in this locker room, we’ve built a great relationship with each other to know that even through tough times and knowing that the season will never be easy – this league is not easy – that we can stick together and overcome any obstacle that we may be faced with.”

Back to Sunday’s game, McKinney remains friends with his former teammates. He’s already planned a jersey swap with defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence, who he plays NBA 2K with “pretty much all the time.”

Spending his first four seasons in New York was an important part of his football journey.

“Man, it taught me a lot,” he said. “It taught me patience, it taught me resiliency. Just a lot of different lessons that I learned throughout the time of being there helped me build into the player I am today.

“It wasn’t always easy. Obviously, it was a lot of ups and downs, a lot of hard, difficult times. I went through life-changing moments while I was in New York. Those were times I definitely won’t ever forget but it molded me into who I am today, and I’m grateful for that time that I spent there.”

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