Jaxson Dart talks about Giants’ attitude this season after beating Eagles
Coming off their big victory over the Eagles, Giants rookie QB Jaxson Dart talks about how the team is approaching each game this season.
EAST RUTHERFORD – Cam Skattebo has brought a legacy to the New York Giants that he has established by inflicting punishment on the football field.
Before Skattebo earned the “Angry Runs” scepter from NFL Network’s Kyle Brandt with his preferred physicality in a pair of plays from his NFL debut, you should go back and revisit the most memorable run of his career to this point – one he chases every time he puts on a helmet and steps between the lines.
The relentlessness with which Skattebo plays was never more evident than one of his three touchdowns he had for Rio Linda High in the 2018 California 5-AA State Championship. He rushed for 396 yards in a 38-35 victory, and one of those scoring jaunts stole the show. Skattebo broke a staggering 10 tackles on a 67-yard scamper in which it appeared every member of the San Gorgonio defense had a chance at dragging him down.
“You know what? I didn’t even count how many tackles he broke,” Jack Garceau, Skattebo’s coach at Rio Linda, recalled with a laugh during an interview with NorthJersey.com and The Record. “It was fun to watch live, and it was one of those things as you watched it, it was like, ‘What is going on?’ Felt like the play took a minute and a half to develop front to back. … That was a single guy effort. That’s who he is. If you could encapsulate his football career and his ability into one play, that would be it.”
So how does the 5-foot-10, 215-pound Skattebo go from the teenager who was told he was too small and too slow to play for USC, UCLA and others when the coaches came through Garceau’s office on recruiting visits to the big stage with the Giants, bare-chest bumping former NFL quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick in celebration on the Amazon Prime Video postgame set last Thursday night?
Skattebo was a dominating presence with three touchdowns and 98 yards rushing for the Giants in an eye-opening upset victory of the reigning Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles.
“He’s crazy: football crazy, there’s no doubt about that, it’s who he is,” Giants co-captain wide receiver Darius Slayton said of Skattebo. “But he’s the right kind of crazy.”
Skattebo and quarterback Jaxson Dart have shoved their way into the spotlight with a bit of gridirion naivete for how bad things have been around here with the Giants for the last decade-plus.
Straight out of a late 1970s skit from “Saturday Night Live,” Dart and Skattebo are relishing the opportunity to become Big Blue’s culture-changing wild and crazy guys.
With an infusion of swagger, toughness, aura and talent, the two rookies who now spend their days in stalls next to each other in the Giants’ locker room seemed plenty comfortable being the symbols of a franchise’s stunning breakthrough as a national audience watched and fell over itself in admiration.
“We have to continue to build on this, but we’re still 2-4,” Skattebo said. “We have to go out there and win the next one, and win the next one, and win the next one. I’m excited for the future, and I can’t wait.”
Skattebo has had his share of nicknames through the years. He was “Houdini” to his family for an ability to somehow escape car seats when he was in diapers with relative ease.
Skattebo used to watch WWE with his late grandfather, so in high school, teammates began referring to him as “Nature Boy,” an homage to the 16-time world wrestling champion, Ric Flair. He embraced that so much, Skattebo would scream out Flair’s trademark “Woo!” whenever he trucked a defender.
He did that on more than one occasion this summer with the Giants, with the team’s social media account putting out a “Woo!” compilation as a hype video. They’ve come to expect the personality, and now Skattebo is delivering the production, taking the lead in the backfield as Tyrone Tracy missed two games with a dislocated shoulder.
“Gosh, more than anything, he reminds me of a Plinko chip from ‘The Price is Right,'” NFL Network analyst Daniel Jeremiah said of Skattebo, who has rushed 82 times for 338 yards and five touchdowns with 20 catches for an additional 155 yards. “Bouncing off everything and everybody.”
Skattebo was told NFL scouts predicted this perceived flaw in his game would hold him back.
“Everybody said I couldn’t pass protect, that was the big question mark next to my name,” he told NorthJersey.com and The Record at his locker recently. “Scouts said it. I heard it. My coach at Arizona State, Coach [Kenny] Dillingham, sat me down and said, ‘This is what they’re saying – pass protection, pass protection, pass protection.'”
First, Skattebo got mad at those trying to poke holes in his game. So he started watching cut-ups of the plays in question. Then he went to work in a quest to turn the most talked about weakness in his game into a strength.
And that mission has revealed itself over the first six weeks of the season with Skattebo’s emergence.
“It’s important to send a message every chance I get, but it’s really most important because it’s part of my job,” said Skattebo, 23. “This is my job from here on out, and hopefully I never have to work again after I’m done playing this game. If that’s what it’s going to take for me to continue to play this game for as long as I want, if that’s what it’s going to take, I’ve got to get better at it.”
Skattebo’s reputation as a football bruiser preceded him to the NFL. That’s a lot to live up to as a rookie, but he’s game.
His first two plays as a professional out of eight total snaps did just that in the Giants’ season-opening 21-6 loss to Washington, starting with a crushing blitz pickup on which he stonewalled defensive back Tyler Owens, allowing a 25-yard completion, the longest play they had in Week 1.
Then, on his first touch, Skattebo caught a swing pass and trucked rookie cornerback Trey Amos and shoved linebacker Frankie Luvu out of the way before muscling through safety Will Harris, who managed to finally take him down. The play only went for six yards, but drew oohs and aahs around the league.
“In my recruitment [during the pre-draft process], I told the coaches, ‘I’m gonna be ready to pass pro when I get there,'” Skattebo said. “It wasn’t that I was bad at it. But I’d touch the ball three or four times in a drive, and when it was time for me to pass pro, I was exhausted. There were times when I looked really bad doing it, and I understand.”
Skattebo missed significant time in training camp recovering from a hamstring injury that kept him off the field. The Giants’ fourth-round pick is proving now he can be more than a novelty that gets the fans and media riled up with his style of play.
Still, Skattebo admits to learning at the level about the intracacies of the position, how the backs fit into the blocking schemes and not just where to run within the offense. His vision is exceptional, and with that comes a better understanding and feel for the big picture one play to the next.
“There’s times I looked good at it and there’s times when I looked really bad in pass pro,” Skattebo said. “And you have to question the bad part, wonder why it’s like that. If they give me the ball four times here in a drive, and then I’m ready to pass pro, am I gonna do the same thing in college? I know those questions raise up and make people wonder, but I’m a football player. I play my hardest every play.”
In college, Skattebo simply broke tackles or ran through defenders with some scouts pushing the opinion that he plays more like a linebacker than a running back. He does not shy away from contact, and was a varsity icon in his hometown even before, as a junior, he rushed for 3,550 yards and 42 touchdowns in a single season.
Skattebo forced 103 missed tackles last season and 1,202 of his 1,712 rushing yards came after contact. He had 45 runs of 10 or more yards and 21 runs of 15 or more yards with 21 touchdowns rushing and three touchdowns receiving.
With respect to Bruce Banner’s Hulk, Skattebo is eager to show there is more to his game as a complete running back than the one you love to see when he’s angry.
“Me and Skatt just have a lot of talks. We sat next to each other on the plane back [from New Orleans], and it definitely hurt us a lot because we felt like we absolutely should have won that game,” Dart said. “We just kept telling each other we got each other; we’re going to lay it all on the line each and every play for each other. We try to message that to our teammates as much as possible. We know everybody is going to rally around each other the more we have performances like this. We can’t get too high; we can’t get too low. The most important thing is the next moment.”
Skattebo has shown he is plenty comfortable pairing with Dart and taking on what has been a near-impossible challenge of changing the perception of the Giants, one angry play at a time.
And yes, if that comes with a little bit of crazy too, so be it.