NY Giants Run Game Looks to Pick Up Pieces After Cam Skattebo Injury

"Tracy, Motor, those guys are going to step up and do a heck of a job in terms of carrying the load in the run game, in the pass game," Kafka said on Thursday as the Giants prepared for the Niners' visit. 

"They do a phenomenal job, and they're pros, right? I mean, these guys are starters in the league and we have full confidence in those two."

Tracy and Singletary are the Giants' top two rushers from last season, and the former figures to be penciled in as RB1 by the time the Niners make their descent upon East Rutherford.

It brings about a macabre irony: amidst the Giants' three-win slog, the 5-foot-11 Tracy made a name for himself among rookie rushers after Singletary got hurt early in the year. 

Singletary is nonetheless a familiar spell option, having spent four effective debut seasons under Giants head coach Brian Daboll's offensive coordinator watch with the Buffalo Bills (2,332 yards and 14 total scores from 2019-21).

Tracy began this season as the Giants' premier runner but struggled in the early going, amassing only 74 yards on 26 carries. That led to increased trust in Skattebo, who took advantage of the opportunity to capture the hearts and minds of Giants fans in a whirlwind over the last five games.

Those efforts and the subsequent injury partly overshadowed Tracy starting to regain at least something of his rookie form: Tracy has mustered 85 yards on 19 carries in the last two games, a good bit of those tallies coming from a touchdown that went the distance of 31 yards in the Week 7 heartbreaker against Denver.

While Tracy's attempt to carve out NFL longevity as a day three pick is an admirable cause, he'll likely need to post historic numbers to make Giants fans fully forget about Skattebo and his reckless abandon that generated some long-sought momentum for a meandering metropolitan offense. 

Fully aware that Skattebo imitations will only lead to disaster, Kafka hopes that Tracy and Singletary will be themselves —the players who created some form of metropolitan longevity amidst a lengthy rebuild.

"Any time we get a guy in the game, we want to build that play, that system around the strengths of those players," Kafka said.

"So, whether it's Tracy, whether it's Motor, we go back and we say, we know who these players are. They've been with us now for a little while, so we understand what they're good at, we understand where their strengths and weaknesses are, and so we try to put them in the best position to be successful."