During the bye week, Giants running backs coach Jerald Ingram said that first-round pick David Wilson had to show the team that he’s more than “just a runner” before he’ll be able to gain more playing time with the team.
Wilson responded to that when the team returned to work on Monday and expressed some confusion about what he can do to prove that he’s improved on areas like pass protection when the team won’t put him on the field. Wilson said that he has never had opportunities to do anything other than run the ball in the NFL and that he feels like his performance at practice has been sound enough in the non-running areas Ingram says he needs to improve.
“When you say show more, do more, you wonder, ‘Where?’” Wilson said, via Jorge Castillo of the Newark Star-Ledger. “I mean, I work hard at practice and do my plays when I’m in and, so, (I’m) waiting.”
Wilson didn’t forget how to do anything but run the ball after getting drafted by the Giants, so they had to know what they were getting just as they had to know about his fumbling problems in college before slashing his playing time dramatically for fumbling in the first game of the season. At some point, Wilson is going to need to get a chance to do things on the field during games. Otherwise, the whole thing will turn into a circle where Wilson doesn’t play because of the things he can’t do and he can’t do those things because he doesn’t get the playing time he needs to work on those aspects of his game.
That opportunity may not come this year and, barring injury, almost certainly won’t come in the next couple of weeks after the Giants whittled their margin of error down to zero with two losses before their bye week.