Cam Skattebo's backflips have Giants' attention: 'I didn't know he could do that'

When Cam Skattebo scored his first NFL touchdown in Week 2 on a 1-yard run against the Cowboys, his teammates went running toward him. They all wanted to be there to give him the obligatory slaps on the shoulder pads and happy bro-hugs as the rookie running back spiked the ball, flexed while staring into the network television camera and celebrated the achievement.

They don’t do that anymore. They’ve learned that Skattebo needs his space.

While the Giants and their fans are still flipping out over how Skattebo has become an offensive force for them, how his three touchdowns helped propel them to a win over the Eagles and how his physical runs have given them a newfound personality as a tough, aggressive team, Skattebo has been doing plenty of flipping himself.

Each of his scoring plays has been punctuated by a backflip that has, in very short order, become his signature move.

He even pulled one off after the final snap of last week’s win from the victory formation in the middle of the field.

Each maneuver seems to be a bit different — against the Eagles, he did one with a running Simone Biles-style cartwheel into the flip, then landed it while pantomiming surfing — but they all involve him launching his 215-pound frame into the air, going completely upside-down and sticking the landing.

At first, in Dallas, the Giants were surprised by the move.

“I didn’t know he could do that,” tight end Daniel Bellinger told Newsday. “So I was like, ‘Oh my God, he’s gonna get hurt, he’s gonna land on his head!’ And then he did it and I was like ‘OK, then.’ I was hyped. Now he does it all the time. But it’s pretty impressive.”

Jaxson Dart had the same reaction.

“The first time he did it, I was like, ‘What is he doing?’ the rookie quarterback said. “But they’re cool. I like them.”

So cool, in fact, that after Dart scored against the Eagles, he and Skattebo lined up together as if they were going to do synchronized backflips. They didn’t. It was a planned fakeout. They just did a more traditional feet-on-the-ground dance.

But that was when Dart scored. When Skattebo scores, everyone knows to back away and let him come back down to Earth before they mob him.

“I’m not trying to get in the way of that guy,” tight end Theo Johnson said. “Whenever he does his thing, we just kind of wait for him to stop moving and yelling before we go up to him.”

Added wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson: “Now I’m expecting it, so I’m just going to let him do his backflip and then I’ll go celebrate with him.”

Skattebo downplayed the move. He said he has been doing backflips just about as long as he can remember, from the age of 5 or 6. He learned to do them on a trampoline in his backyard in California. “It’s just something I do,” he said.

He didn’t celebrate his college touchdowns at Arizona State that way because there are penalties at that level for excessive celebrations. “I kind of had to stay away from that,” he said.

As for the various approaches and finishes he adds as flourishes, he said: “It depends on how tired I am. I might do some different or be a little off balance, but I feel the same when I do it.”

Skattebo isn’t the first Giants running back to celebrate scoring in this way. Former first-round pick David Wilson used to do the same thing . . . at least until coach Tom Coughlin put the kibosh on it for fear of him getting injured. Wilson’s career was shortened by a neck injury, but it wasn’t the flips that did him in.

In fact, Wilson can still do them. Last week he met up with Skattebo in the tunnel outside the Giants’ locker room at MetLife Stadium and showed the rookie how he used to do them. Skattebo said he was unfamiliar with Wilson’s career but was happy to meet a fellow flipper. He also said he was a little skeptical about Wilson’s claim of doing the stunts in games.

“I went home and looked him up and saw him do a couple of backflips after his touchdowns and I was like, ‘Oh, all right, this guy is being serious,’  ” he said.

As for getting hurt, neither Skattebo nor current coach Brian Daboll has the concern that Coughlin had.

“Athletes are athletes,” Skattebo said. “I’ve been doing them my whole life and knock on wood never been hurt doing it. But I try to keep it as safe as possible. I try not to do too many turns and twists.”

Daboll said of the moves earlier this month: “I wish I could do them.”

The fact that Skattebo can pull it off — with full pads and a helmet weighing him down — remains impressive even in a locker room full of world-class athletes.

“Shoot, it shows exactly how powerful that lower body is and the explosiveness that he has,” Robinson said. “You see why he can run through a lot of people.”

“He’s definitely underrated as an athlete,” Bellinger said. “He’s got really good contact balance.”

Are there others on the team who could do such a move?

“I never even tried to do a backflip,” Bellinger said. “If I got some practice, maybe, but I don’t feel like landing on my head and hurting my neck. I’d have to get on a trampoline or something to boost my confidence.”

Said Robinson: “I’ve done it without pads and that’s kind of easy, but with pads and a helmet on, nah, I’m not doing that.”

Johnson said that at 6-6, he is too tall to pull off the flip, but he joked that he might ask Skattebo for some lessons on it during the bye week.

After faking the takeoff last week, Dart said he would like to try it for real one day.

“I need a little more offseason training to consistently get it, especially with pads on and a helmet,” he said. “But maybe we can start doing them more next year. I’m confident. I did gymnastics when I was younger, so I got a little bit in me.”

The Giants have enough worries getting Dart to slide at the end of his runs. They need to figure out how to get him to go down feet forward before he starts going feet straight up.

Skattebo, though, seems to have the hang of the hang time needed to keep right on flipping.

Now all he and the Giants need is for him to keep producing the touchdowns and the wins to keep them going.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

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.