Phillip Dillard making NFL debut, Wilkinson sidelined by broken hand

I spoke with Phillip Dillard this week about what I figured would be his first NFL game. He’d been playing some with the first unit on special teams and it didn’t look like Wilkinson was, so I read some tea leaves. Dillard didn’t give it up that he would be playing, but he was pretty excited about the possibility.

“I’ve got about seven weeks of want-to-playness built up,” he told me.

He’s been sidelined since a hamstring injury in the final preseason game forced him to miss a few games and then it became a numbers game of getting him on the field. Well, with Wilkinson out for today with a cast on his broken left hand, Dillard is playing.

The other inactives for the Giants are the four who did not make the trip – Darius Reynaud, Shaun O’Hara, Madison Hedgecock and Will Beatty – along with Jamon Meredith, Alex Hall and Linval Joseph.

Dillard is in there primarily to help the Giants control Leon Washington on special teams.