For years you have a football in your hands, an agile, quick, explosive playmaker who makes you feel like a giant despite your diminutive size … and then you tear your ACL and worry you’ll never be Wan’Dale Robinson again.
“There were days when I’d come home after practice or after a rehab workout and I’d wonder, ‘Will I be the same person I was before, will I be able to do the things I was before, will I be able to make shots, will people really feel the same way about me as a football player?'” Robinson recalled.
He was a rookie who was just beginning to prove to everyone why he was the Giants’ second-round draft pick out of Kentucky in 2022, having just caught his ninth pass for 100 career yards in a Week 11 win over the Lions, when his world changed forever.
“I ran 100 yards. I actually made that catch. I did a little slide route, got the ball with one hand, got out of the tackle and I remember trying to brace myself and I think that’s where I screwed up. If I had just fallen, I probably wouldn’t have torn my ACL,” Robinson said. “But everything happens for a reason. That’s definitely what I remember most. And then I fell to the ground and screamed.”
He remembers team physician Dr. Scott Rodeo telling him the season was over.
“As a rookie, you hate to have that said, especially when you’re playing the best game of your career,” Robinson said. “You’re in the shower by yourself and it all just doesn’t sink in and you’re like, ‘Oh man, my season is over.’ So it just makes you anxious about when you’re going to come back and if you’re going to be able to get back to what you were before.”
He missed the Giants’ surprise playoff run and had to cheer on their first playoff win in 11 years against the Vikings while thinking about it alone, which was tough for him.
“I remember sitting in my hotel room in L.A. watching the game. That’s it,” Robinson said. “That’s what I remember most about that season. Obviously, I remember playing against the Lions. I remember getting hurt in that game. But I also remember the feeling of going to the playoffs and winning that game.”
“Usually they’re calling out certain plays and I’m like, ‘I’m here, I’m here,’ but it was like, ‘Damn!’ It was really like, ‘Can I come back to myself and do this?'” Robinson said, managing a smile.
Nearing the end of a grueling rehab last summer, Robinson avoided the PUP list and returned at No. 17 for Week 3 at San Francisco. He finished his sophomore season with 60 catches for 525 yards and one touchdown.
And now? Now he’s primed for a breakout season.
“I feel like I haven’t felt this way since before I got drafted,” he said. “I got to do everything I really wanted to do and train the way I wanted to do it all offseason, so it was awesome.”
Robinson could be the Robin to Malik Nabors’ Batman.
“For me, it’s about having my feet on the ground,” he said. “I’m a one-stick, dead-leg guy, so if I know I can get my feet on the ground the way I want to, then I know when I’m going to get back to myself.”
At 5-foot-8 and 178 pounds, he reminds me of former Giant Sterling Shepard.
“He taught me a lot of things, route running and how to get open from certain different spots. He’s still like a big brother to me,” Robinson said.
He can execute a jet sweep in his sleep, and coach Brian Daboll will likely tell Robinson to do just that.
“He’s aggressive, he’s smart, he knows how to look at mismatches,” Robinson said of Daboll. “Just from camp, not game planning or anything like that, you can see how his brain works, you can see the vision for where he wants to put guys, where he wants to put guys in certain positions.”
On draft night, some Giants fans lamented that Robinson was too early a second-round pick.
“I always felt like if I was on the field and healthy I could make an impact,” Robinson said.
What would Wan’Dale Robinson say to Giants fans? He smiles and says:
“Look at how I’ve played this year.”
