Ahmad Bradshaw sat quietly on his couch at home in Indianapolis last Sunday night, watching the Giants play the Cowboys while his former Big Blue protégé, David Wilson, endured a running back’s worst nightmare on national television.
While Bradshaw watched the game, he held a football in his arms — a habit he follows even at home as a reminder to protect the ball in games — and with each Wilson fumble in Dallas, he clutched that football closer to his chest as if there were linebackers about to burst into his living room trying to strip it from him.
“I’ve been in that same predicament, and it’s all mental,’’ Bradshaw told The Post by phone on Thursday. “As a running back, it gets into your head.’’
Bradshaw, who lost six fumbles in the 2010 season and had to redefine the way he carried the ball if he was going to continue his career, said he planned to reach out to Wilson before the Giants home opener against the Broncos on Sunday.
After six seasons with the Giants, Bradshaw was released in the offseason — a clear indication the team was ready to make Wilson the lead back.
But in his leading-man debut, Wilson fumbled the ball away to the Cowboys twice and was as big a reason for the Giants’ 36-31 loss as anyone. Coach Tom Coughlin indicated as much, not sugar-coating the matter, when he said, “He cost us dearly.’’ So that has made Wilson’s week longer than that of anyone else on the team.
Coughlin benched Wilson for the rest of the Dallas game after the second fumble, and on Wednesday called Wilson a “marked man.’’
So this is the baggage Wilson will carry while awaiting his next carry at MetLife Stadium, where there surely will be a hush of collective held-breath from the capacity crowd the first time he touches the ball.
“I remember going through it,’’ former Giants running back Tiki Barber told The Post on Friday. “I could feel the crowd holding their breath when I got the ball. It’s palpable. You feel it … and it’s not a comforting feeling. But when you solve it, it is really is refreshing.’’
Barber, who fumbled 35 times from 2000-03 with the Giants before changing his technique thanks to the help of running backs coach Jerald Ingram (who’s still with the team), tried to help Wilson solve the problem through a series of text messages the two exchanged earlier this week.
In his final three seasons, Barber fumbled just nine times while rushing for 5,040 yards and 27 touchdowns.
“My advice to David is to do something that’s going to make you feel comfortable that is not going to be a liability,’’ Barber said. “The main gist of what I told him was always be aware of contact.’’
Barber related to the pressures Wilson is facing being the lead back with Bradshaw gone and backup Andre Brown on injured reserve with a leg fracture.
“It’s not easy being ‘the man,’ ’’ Barber said. “Now, David is ‘the guy’ and he wants to prove himself as the superstar he predicted he’s going to be and this happens, he gets frustrated and there is nothing he can do about it.’’
Until Sunday.
“He’ll have those two fumbles in the back of his head for the rest of the year, and I think that’ll help him,’’ Bradshaw said. “He’ll get stronger from it and I don’t think that’ll happen with David too much anymore.’’
Bradshaw, like Barber before him, credited Ingram for turning his fumbling problem around by having him carry a football with him wherever he goes during the workday — at practice, in meetings, at lunch and, he said: “Everybody around the building would be poking at it all day.’’
Bradshaw then took things a step further and brought a ball home with him.
“When you’re lazy and sitting on the couch it puts that mindset in your head to never relax with that ball in your hands,’’ he said.
“That helped me tremendously, and it still does. I still keep a ball right beside my couch. I’ve even thought about trying to sleep with the dad-gum thing.’’