Cam Skattebo went through a full NFL game without touching the ball for the first time in his career, and the New York Giants lost 34-27 to the New Orleans Saints with their backfield suddenly stripped down. He finished Sunday without a carry, then said afterward that he had been punished for what he did the previous week.
That punishment came after he lost a fumble against the Washington Commanders in overtime on the previous Sunday, his fourth fumble of the season and a turnover that gave away possession. Skattebo said he understood the consequence. He said he had to be ready when his coach called, and that was not Sunday.
The numbers made the shift impossible to miss. Skattebo entered the game with 81 carries in 2026 and left with the same total. He played, but he did not see the field in the second half, and he said his workload had fallen from 50 snaps to five snaps. He also said he did not know that kind of drop was coming.
The Giants still could not run the ball even against a Saints defense that came in ranked 30th in rushing yards allowed, 26th in yards per carry allowed, 26th in defensive rushing EPA and 32nd in defensive rushing success rate. The Giants rushed for 84 yards, but quarterbacks J.J. McCarthy and Jameis Winston and receiver Darnell Mooney accounted for 50 of them. The running backs combined for 14 carries for 34 yards, a 2.4 YPC average that left the offense leaning elsewhere.
Najee Harris started for the Giants and had four carries for two yards. The team had only six carries from its running backs in the second half, when it trailed 34-10. That left Skattebo on the sideline for long stretches while the offense searched for a spark.
John Harbaugh said the Giants did not bench Skattebo and that the zero-carry outing was not by design. He said all of the running backs got equal reps in the first half as the staff tried to see who could make something happen and earn it. Then he added the blunt part: when Skattebo was in there, the Giants did not call any runs. Once the game got away from them, Harbaugh said, they were down by a bunch.
Skattebo accepted the message, even if the effect was severe. He said he had made mistakes and had to own up to them, and he said he understood if the Giants wanted to keep him on the sideline because of it. The open question is how long that lasts, because Sunday showed the cost of one mistake and the limits of a ground game that could not rescue him when the chance to answer finally arrived.
