Giants RB Cam Skattebo Talks His Fanatics Flip, Harbaugh, Dart & More I The Rich Eisen Show

Cam Skattebo has heard all of it, and his summary of the reaction to his failed backflip at Fanatics Fest is the most New York sentence a Giants running back has produced this offseason.

"That's what New York does. They blow everything up."

Rich, who admits to rooting for him and had the same reaction everybody else did while watching, asked what happened. Skattebo's answer was less reckless than the clip suggests, because it turns out he was doing physics in midair. He had never been on a WWE stage before, and those stages are built to give. "They make those stages real bouncy. So when I took off, I knew I was a little too high. I was over rotating a little too much, and I had a plan of how I was going to fall. So I fell how I needed to fall to be comfortable."

Then the part that actually matters. "I was able to come out of that alive and back on the football field. So that's all that really matters."

The organizational response was not what Rich expected either. John Harbaugh, in the immediate aftermath, said nothing at all. The text came from general manager Joe Schoen, and Skattebo characterized it as reassurance rather than a reprimand. Lay low for a little bit. The season is coming. We need you healthy. "It was less of a hey, you need to do this, and more of like a hey, just look out for yourself."

Harbaugh got to it eventually, and his question was not whether Skattebo should have tried it. He asked why he did not land it.

So the flips are not retired, only rationed. "I'm going to slowly go away from the backflips, because people don't like them, but they also love them." His plan is to mix them in here and there rather than at last year's volume, "just to make sure people keep their head and leveled a little bit."

Rich, sensing an opening, asked about Sunday Night Football in Week 1.

"Yeah, 100%."

On Harbaugh more broadly, Skattebo described a relationship built deliberately over a few months. They talk every day. What struck him was less the resume than the specificity of the demands. "He knows how to win football games, so him demanding that from us, and we really have bought in."

That buy-in has a physical cost, which is where the padded practice story everyone in New York is discussing comes from. "We're practicing every minute we possibly can that the NFL allows us to, and we're using pads every minute that we're legally allowed to."

Asked what that actually communicates to a locker room, Skattebo gave the two-part answer of a player who has thought about it. One, they are going to be a physical football team. Two, and more usefully, it changes the math on Sundays. "When you put pads on and you allow guys to play football the way it's supposed to be played as much as possible, then when we get to the game, you're going to realize that the game is easy."

He was careful but honest about the contrast with last season, and did not hide behind a cliché. "I'm not going to say we weren't ready for the games, but we obviously weren't as physical as we're going to be this year."

Rich's read on all of it was that the coach has figured out how to keep the team locked in without sanding down the personality, which he summarized as Harbaugh speaking fluent Skattebo. Skattebo agreed without hesitation.

As for what year two looks like coming off the injury, he did not hedge at all. "Everything you seen last year times 10. You're going to see the high energy me, scoring a lot of touchdowns, running for a lot of yards, and having fun while I'm doing it."

Underneath the volume there was something quieter. "My injuries taught me a lot about who I am as a player and who I am as a person."

Then Rich asked about Jaxson Dart, and got the best answer of the interview. Skattebo called him "the evil stepbrother that never answers his phone," which he meant affectionately and also literally. Dart, by his account, is consumed by the game in a way that is genuinely instructive. "There's nothing that's going to get in his way from film study or talking to coaches about something he could be doing on the field. He's a player that inspires me every day to be better."

The friendship expresses itself the way it does among competitive 20-somethings. The day before, Dart had been talking smack about Skattebo not working out as hard as he does, which escalated to the traditional question of who would win a fight in a phone booth. "We have those conversations all the time. That's my little stepbrother that is really annoying, but he loves this game."

Rich needed the answer to the phone booth question. Skattebo provided it immediately. "He would have no chance."

He also refused to be cheap about it, which made the verdict better. "Jaxson's a dog. He's very competitive. He's a strong individual. He works really hard for what he has." And then, unmoved by his own praise: "But if we were in a phone booth, he'd have no shot."

There was also a mild campaign for expanded usage. Rich has seen him throw, and Skattebo confirmed the arm is real. "I could have played quarterback if I wasn't 5'9" and 7/8"," a measurement he delivered with the fraction intact. Nothing is in the playbook yet, but the pitch has been made. "I've made it known to Harbaugh that I can do multiple things. So I'm excited to see what he can cook up for me."

The bad-texting complaint about Dart landed close to home in the studio, since TJ Jefferson has the same reputation, and is also a Cowboys fan heading into that Sunday night game. Skattebo took it in stride. "That makes sense. I wouldn't look at my phone either." Jefferson, who met Skattebo at Fanatics Fest two years ago and co-hosts No Contest Wrestling with O'Shea Jackson Jr., used the moment to extend a podcast invitation.

On the sleeper label everyone is attaching to the Giants, Skattebo declined the compliment. "I wouldn't say there's a sleeper team. We're a different team than we were last year, so you can kind of wipe that out of the books." What replaces it is plainer. "I think you're going to see some winning football from the New York Giants." He also passed along Harbaugh's phrase for what they are building, which is a football war machine.

He does not do goals in the conventional sense, but he does do targets. "I like to set goals that are kind of like people think are unreachable for me. You say the highest number, I'm going to jump forward and try my best."

Rich, a Staten Island guy, closed with something between advice and a blessing, telling Skattebo that his style is exactly what New York sports fans want and that he has a rare ability to plug his own play directly into a stadium. His counsel was two unsolicited cents. Go for it.

The last question was about the tunnel on Sunday night, after everything the rehab took. Skattebo started with the honest part. "I'm obviously going to be nervous. Every game I'm nervous." Then the rest of it. "When I get that ball in my hands, it's going to be a new me, new game, new season, new team, new coach."