Tom Rock: Cam Skattebo, Braelon Allen give Giants, Jets a smash-mouth running attack
Giants running back Cam Skattebo and Jets running back Braelon Allen. Credit: Jim McIsaac
There are not many similarities between the Giants and Jets these days. One brought in a proven Super Bowl-winning coach, the other has one who has yet to prove he is up to the job. One has a second-year starting quarterback, the other has a second-time-around one. One is hoping to exceed fairly low outside expectations and the other . . .
Well, maybe they do have a few things in common.
There is one area that stands out in which both have very specific strengths that can come in handy when games turn physical and potentially swing advantages in their favor.
Between the Jets' Braelon Allen and the Giants' Cam Skattebo, the teams have two of the meanest, nastiest, most determined, bullheaded running backs in the league. In the tradition of John Riggins, Earl Campbell and Marshawn Lynch, these two have an uncanny knack for knock and an aggressive mentality that can bully opponents into submission.
The NFL generally is a game of speed and quickness, explosive plays and amazing athleticism. Yet when it comes down to getting that all-important tough yard — or extra one, as the case may be — both the Jets and Giants know to whom they will turn.
With Allen and Skattebo returning to their backfields after missing big chunks of last season because of injuries, New York is back to being the league’s SmashTown. For a city that likes to think of itself as a blue-collar, down-and-dirty area — never mind all of those limousines circling the skyscrapers — that’s just the kind of football identity we tend to embrace.
They don’t know each other well, it turns out. “But I respect his game a lot and his running style,” Allen said of Skattebo.
It’s probably because it’s so akin to his own. So much like the identity for which each of the teams is striving.
Allen is a 6-1, 235-pound block of muscle who can pound his way through cracks and push piles like a plow.
“It aligns perfectly with the culture we want to build here,” he said of his style (or, as he called it, his “superpower”). “When we get into those late-season games and it’s cold and there is a lot on the line, I want to be the guy they can lean on and play my brand of ball and embrace that.”
Skattebo is a bit smaller — he’s listed at 5-11 and 215 — but packs just as big a punch while running with abandon. That is appreciated by coach John Harbaugh.
“People know I'm crazy,” Skattebo said. “I like to run through people instead of run around them . . . I think Coach Harbs loves that I run right over the top of people. Physicality is his number one thing.”
Both have gotten advice from the current king of wrecking ball running backs, Derrick Henry.
“He is kind of the model of that style of running for bigger backs,” Allen said. “Derrick is probably the guy I can relate most to and I lean on him. We talk all the time.”
Before the NFL Draft last spring, Skattebo said he met with Henry, who gave him this simple advice: “Keep pushing.”
Literally or figuratively? Probably both.
Skattebo now plays for Harbaugh, Henry’s former coach in Baltimore, and now is running behind Harbaugh's former Ravens fullback, Patrick Ricard.
Ricard said Henry was the only running back he ever had to change his blocking to accommodate.
“If I wasn’t on my guy right away, he would run me over,” Ricard told Newsday. “As soon as the ball is snapped, Derrick is trying to sprint through the ball, get the ball and go 100 miles per hour right away. There is no reading anything, no slowing down. It’s all about trying to accelerate and go.
"There were many times where he would just stiff-arm me because I was going too slow and put me on my knees or on the ground. He was the only one I had to be on my horse and make sure I was getting there right away for, and it helped me out.”
Now he’ll bring that for Skattebo, who Ricard said was one of the reasons — along with Harbaugh and senior offensive assistant and running game coordinator Greg Roman — why he signed with the Giants as a free agent.
“Knowing the running backs who were already here, I felt like it was a perfect match for me,” he said.
Ricard certainly understands what having the kind of running game the Ravens had can do for a team.
“When you have a physical running back group, it makes the whole offense physical,” he said. “The offensive linemen and receivers need to keep up. Then, as a defense, it’s like they know they are going to have to match the physicality, and so it’s, can you match that all game? If we get the ball running and we are downhill on all of our run plays and we keep getting yards over and over again, are they going to be able to last and play a whole game with us?”
Rhetorical questions. Allen and Skattebo are going to ask the real ones.
So are others, of course. The Jets have Breece Hall as their main running back, and he can grind it out when necessary. The Giants just added Najee Harris, of whom assistant general manager Brandon Brown said he “doesn't need things blocked up cleanly for him to push the pile.”
Allen and Skattebo are far from one-dimensional, but they do stand out as the bone-crunching tone-setters.
New Jets safety Minkah Fitzpatrick chuckled ruefully when asked about the challenge of facing Allen throughout this past training camp and in game action in previous seasons.
“He’s a really big dude, but he is also shifty for his size,” Fitzpatrick said. “He can make you miss whether in the open field or in the gap, in the box. The fact he is multi-faceted like that, it’s very hard to bring him down. Every time I see him back there, even when we played them last year, I see him back there and I say: 'Let me tighten up my helmet a little bit more.' I’m really happy he is on our team.”
We definitely know what Giants defenders think about Skattebo. They seemed pretty fed up with getting hit by him in practices this summer — especially when they were not allowed to tackle him — and at one point late in training camp, there was a fight because of it.
“Obviously, people see him as a big meathead running through people, but he can do a lot of things very well on the football field,” said Giants cornerback Greg Newsome II, who was in the middle of that confrontation. “He showcased that in college. He showcased that a little bit last season in the games he did play. I'm super-excited for him going into Year 2."
Just as Fitzpatrick is with Allen, he's also excited that beginning next Sunday, he is going to be someone else’s problem to deal with.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
