Giants hope Ware's return will aid running game
Photo credit: Newsday / David Pokress | Giants' Brandon Jacobs runs for yardage at Giants Stadium on Nov. 8, 2009.
Who'll be the most important player to the Giants' running attack in the second half of this season? Brandon Jacobs? Ahmad Bradshaw? Any of the offensive linemen?
Nope. If you ask running backs coach Jerald Ingram, it might be a guy with four career carries: Danny Ware.
"Danny has barely been on the field as a player for us," Ingram said this week. "But we see all this potential. He can catch the ball, run the ball, he's big enough to protect."
What he also did was dislocate his elbow on the first play of the year, returning a kickoff. That might have seemed like a minor loss at the time - a third-string running back out a few weeks - but Ingram said Ware was a big part of the team's plans for a three-man backfield rotation.
Now that Ware is back on the field?
"You've got your banger, your third-down back and your speed changeup guy, and away we go," Ingram said of Jacobs, Ware and Bradshaw, respectively. "We put it on our shoulders and we try to motivate the offense as well as the defense and get everybody happy."
The Giants aren't exactly floundering in the running game. Jacobs and Bradshaw are on pace for nearly 1,000 yards each. Jacobs' running style was a concern early in the season, but Ingram said losing Ware was one of the reasons for Jacobs' diminished production and seemingly timid running.
"Early in the year it hurt us a little bit to not have Danny Ware," Ingram said. "We had anticipations of Danny being that third-down type of guy who could do those things that Derrick Ward did a year ago. So now you end up taking a step backward. Last year [Brandon] was the beast, going downhill doing the things that he does best. And that is what you expect him to do. He had to shift gears."
In other words, Jacobs was running plays that were designed for different running backs.
"When you have a guy who is 6-foot-4 going east and west and has to follow a pulling guard, [the defense] is going to be right on top of him," Ingram said. "Let a guy who is 6-4 try to bounce and go from one hole to the next . . . and the perception is going to look like a guy tippy-toeing through the hole because he is still trying to find where the hole is."
Those are the kinds of plays that Ware and Bradshaw can make. And, it sounds like, the kinds of plays that they will make going forward.
Asked if Ware will become a part of the backfield rotation, offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride was blunt: "He has to be."
Notes & quotes: Asked what the primary focus of his bye week would be, Justin Tuck quickly said, "My health." He played through an early shoulder injury and suffered a leg injury late in Sunday's game against the Chargers . . . Eli Manning said he'd spend some time away from football during the bye.
