CANTON, Ohio — As the Giants await what could be fateful news on David Wilson’s future in football, they move forward without him and into Sunday night’s Hall of Fame Game preseason opener intent on improving their dismal 2013 rushing offense.
The Giants are coming off a season in which they finished 29th in the league in rushing, averaging a meager 83.3 yards.
To ensure that doesn’t happen again, they signed Rashad Jennings from the Raiders and selected Andre Williams, a Heisman Trophy finalist from Boston College, in the fourth round of the NFL Draft.
They also have veteran Peyton Hillis and second-year Michael Cox and all should get playing time against the Bills.
“Realistically, we’re going to be able to show a lot,” Jennings said. “Obviously game planning for the first preseason game, especially the Hall of Fame game, there isn’t game planning strategically, but there is, without a doubt, competition.
“You’re always curious about the contact. Anybody can run around in underwear, anybody can run around and play two-hand touch but at the end of the day you know, I know, we all know, it’s about being physical and so Sunday we get a chance to crack heads a little bit and tackle.”
The Giants put on display a no-huddle offense at the start of almost every team period in training camp and expect that to be the norm this season, not exclusively but at some point in every game. The first look at the rapid-fire tempo comes in this opener.
“We’ll be trying to get in and out of the huddle fast,” Eli Manning said, “get to the line of scrimmage, get things declared and try to push our guys and see if we can have a quick tempo and see if that will help out our play.”
Josh Brown and Brandon McManus will be among the first kickers involved in the NFL’s extra-point experiment.
The league is pushing back the line of scrimmage for PATs to the 15-yard line (making it akin to a 33-yard field goal), starting with this game and continuing through the first two weeks of the preseason.
The ball is normally snapped from the 2-yard line but the league wants to see if it can make the extra point more difficult, as the success-rate last season was 99.6 percent.
“I am absolutely interested to see what happens,” Brown said. “I think it definitely makes kickers more valuable than they already are. It makes every point more important than it’s ever been and it just brings a new flair to the game, a new dynamic.”
Brown is the favorite to retain the Giants’ kicking job. McManus scored a school-record 338 points at Temple.
Rookie WR Odell Beckham Jr., the first-round pick from LSU, won’t make his debut because of a strained hamstring.
Besides Beckham, 11 players did not make the trip because of injuries: DE Robert Ayers, LB Jon Beason, LT Will Beatty, TE Xavier Grimble, G Eric Herman, WR Trindon Holliday, CB Bennett Jackson, CB Trumaine McBride, DT Mike Patterson, LB Spencer Paysinger and RB Robert Wilson.