CANTON, Ohio — As they cross their fingers on D-Day — David Day — and pray that the kid with the infectious smile and indomitable spirit can one day play football with them again, it appears at the moment there will be Life After David Wilson if there must be for the Giants.
As Wilson waits eagerly Monday for yet another examination at the Hospital for Special Surgery and another set of X-rays by the man who performed his neck fusion surgery, Dr. Frank Cammisa, the Hall of Fame Game Sunday night against the Bills offered another reminder that time marches on and waits for no one in the NFL.
As the organization, if not Wilson himself, fears for his football career, Rashad Jennings and Andre Williams took the opportunity handed them and ran with it, ran hard and decisively with it, even if a good chunk of it came against the Bills’ second team.
In the Next-Man-Up reality of the NFL, the Giants, 17-13 winners Sunday night, summoned Jennings via free agency and Williams via the draft as Next Men Up because they could not afford to roll the dice on Wilson’s return.
“Oh they run hard,” offensive tackle Justin Pugh said. “When you have a guy back there knowing what he’s gonna do when he touches the ball, it makes you want to stay on that block a little bit longer, make sure you give him that hole.”
In Ben McAdoo’s hybrid, up-tempo West Coast offense, Jennings, hardly a shrinking violet at 6-foot-1, 231 pounds, will be an invaluable weapon for Eli Manning catching passes out of the backfield. Jennings caught all three targets in his three series for 20 yards, and added 7 carries for 23 yards rushing. “All the things that we thought,” Tom Coughlin said.
Manning (6-of-7 passing for 43 yards, a lost fumble on a strip sack) won’t reach the stated goal of a 70 percent completion average, but he will have a chance to push into the mid-60s with Jennings executing the screen game and possibly catching as many as 50 balls.
“That’ll help out our offense,” Manning said. “He catches the ball very naturally out of the backfield, so that’ll be a part of our offense where you get him in good matchups and have him win some one-on-one battles.”
Giants backs totaled 50 catches in 2013. Jennings, in 15 games with the Raiders last season, caught 36 passes for 292 yards.
“Catching out of the backfield is a big part that makes defenses have to play honest, and also, you can be quarterback-friendly and always there,” Jennings said. “If the quarterback gets in trouble, your routes nine times out of 10 will be closest to the QB.”
Williams looks like a fourth-round steal. He is a 230-something-pound baby bull who runs like he is 210.
“I feel like God built me to run the ball,” Williams said.
He is a runaway train who delights in destroying the will of lesser men, the very mentality that endeared Brandon Jacobs to Big Blue Nation hearts.
“When he came in and tagged me in, I could see the white in his eyes — he was nervous,” Jennings said. “I told him after the first contact, he’ll realize it’s just football. He’s gonna do great things in the backfield.”
Williams, the goal-line back, has a nose for the end zone. His 3-yard TD run behind fullback Henry Hynoski was the epitome of Neanderthal, smashmouth football that will not become an anachronism on Coughlin’s watch, even in this quarterback-crazed NFL.
“I like this offense because we have tools to fix any problem a defense throws at us,” Jennings said.
Williams showed burst turning the left corner on a 21-yard gain and finished 48 yards on seven rushes. He is working feverishly to improve as a receiver, a role he was never asked to embrace at Boston College, and as a pass protector.
“I’m glad I was able to get my feet wet,” Williams said.
So was Coughlin.
“He ran with speed and power,” Coughlin said.
Life After David Wilson, if there is no David Wilson.