For years and years, you are a playmaker with a football in your hands, shifty and quick and explosive, and it makes you feel like a giant even as diminutive as you are. … And then you tear your ACL, and you fear that you will never be Wan’Dale Robinson again.
“There’d be days I’m going home after practice or after my rehab workout and I’m just like, ‘I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to be the same person, do the same things that I was doing, or shoot, even do they really still feel the same way about me as a football player?’” Robinson recalled.
He was a rookie who was just starting to show everyone why the Giants drafted him in the second round out of Kentucky in 2022, who had just caught his ninth pass for his 100th yard in Week 11 against the Lions, when his world turned upside down.
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“I got the 100 yards, and that was the catch actually, caught the ball one-handed on a little slide route, broke a tackle, and then I just remember trying to catch myself and kind of think that was where I messed up. I should have just let myself fall and never would have tore the ACL,” Robinson said. “But everything kind of happens for a reason. That’d definitely be what I remember most, and screaming on the ground.”
He remembers team physician Dr. Scott Rodeo telling him that his season was over.
“You don’t like to hear that as a rookie, especially at the point in time having your best career game,” Robinson said. “You’re just kind of by yourself in that shower, and then it all hits you, it’s just like, ‘Damn, my season’s over with,’ so just wondering when you’re gonna get back and if you’ll ever be the same.”
He would miss the Giants’ surprise playoff run, had to cheer for their first playoff win in 11 years, against the Vikings, alone with his thoughts, and it killed him.
“I remember sitting in a hotel room watching it in L.A., that’s about it,” Robinson said. “That’s what I remember most about that season. Obviously, I remember playing the Lions, that was the game I got hurt. I wanted to be able to have that feeling of going to the playoffs and winning that playoff game too, though.”
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He manages a smile. “All the time they’re calling certain plays and I’m like, ‘I’d be right here, I’d be right here,” and it’s like, ‘Damn!’ That was really a moment that you’re really out there like, ‘Am I gonna be able to get back to getting to myself and doing this stuff again?’ ” Robinson said.
Toward the end of a grueling rehab last summer, Robinson avoided the PUP list and was back in his No. 17 for Week 3 at San Francisco. He finished his second season with 60 catches for 525 yards and one touchdown.
And now? Now he is primed for his breakout season.
“I feel like I haven’t felt like this since even before I got drafted,” he said. “It’s been great this whole offseason, just being able to do everything I really wanted to do and train the way I wanted to train.”
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Robinson can be Robin to Malik Nabers’ Batman.
“For me it’s being able to put my foot in the ground,” he said. “I’m kind of a one-stick and a dead-leg guy, so if I know I can put my foot in the ground the way I want to, I kind of know when I’m back to myself.”
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At 5-foot-8, 178 pounds, he reminds you of former Giant Sterling Shepard.
“He taught me so much just about route-running and how to get open from certain different spots. He’s still like a big brother to me,” Robinson said.
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He can run jet sweeps in his sleep, and coach Brian Daboll will be calling them for Robinson.
“He’s aggressive, he’s smart, he knows how to get his mismatches and things like that,” Robinson said of Daboll. “Even just with camp, and it’s not really game-planning and things like that, you can see just how his brain is working, and where he wants guys and you can see the vision of how he wants to get a guy in a certain spot.”
There were Giants fans who groaned on draft night that Robinson was a second-round reach.
“I knew whenever I was out there on the field and healthy, I felt like I was always gonna make an impact,” Robinson said.
What would Wan’Dale Robinson tell Giants fans? He smiles and says:
“Watch me play this year.”
