Cam Skattebo botched the landing on a backflip at a Fanatics Fest event over the weekend, and the clip of the New York Giants running back stumbling to the ground spread fast. A day later, he addressed it himself, insisting his surgically repaired ankle came through fine.
The fall happened Saturday during a WWE-themed entrance segment at Fanatics Fest in New York City, according to ESPN. Skattebo pulled up his pant leg to show fans the ankle that ended his rookie season, then went for the flip. He didn’t stick it. He rocked backward and hit the ground before popping back up.
By Sunday, he was already answering for it. Appearing on SiriusXM’s “The Fantasy Footballers” during another Fanatics Fest session, Skattebo walked through exactly what went wrong.
“I’ve been doing backflips since I was like four years old. So it’s natural to me. I’m gonna address the elephant. I will not hurt myself before the season,” Skattebo said, according to NFL.com.
He put the blame on the stage, not his legs. “Those floors are bouncy,” he explained. “So when I took off, I was mid-air, like, holy cow, I’m not gonna land this, I’m way too high. Landed, but it had too much cushion. It wasn’t a stiff, firm ground. So that’s why I kinda like went back, safely landed, got back up, was good to go.”
The stakes made the moment bigger than a normal offseason stumble. Skattebo is roughly nine months removed from a gruesome combination injury — an open tibia fracture, a dislocated right ankle and a ruptured deltoid ligament, suffered against the Philadelphia Eagles last October, per Yahoo Sports, which cited ESPN’s Jordan Raanan on the injury details. That injury ended his rookie season and put a question mark over his readiness for 2026.
New Giants coach John Harbaugh had already flagged the backflip habit once. He joked last month, per ESPN, that he’d told Skattebo “no backflips” during minicamp. Harbaugh has not issued a public statement on the Fanatics Fest fall as of this writing.
Not everyone in the building was worried. Teammate Jaxson Dart, sitting next to Skattebo for the same SiriusXM appearance, framed the miss as more athletic than reckless.
“When I looked at it though, I was like, that’s the most explosive I’ve seen Skat. He over-rotated,” Dart said. “He looks real good, man. He looks real good.”
Dart’s read matters here. Over-rotating means Skattebo generated too much lift and spin, not too little, which is a different problem than an ankle that couldn’t handle the load. It’s the kind of detail that separates “he can’t push off that leg yet” from “he pushed off it too well.”
This wasn’t Skattebo’s first backflip since the injury, either. He landed one cleanly at a charity basketball event earlier this offseason, and outlets pointed to that moment as evidence his recovery was ahead of schedule. That contrast is part of why the fall drew so much noise — fans and analysts had already been shown the version of this stunt that worked.
Frankly, neither the landed flip nor the missed one is probably a prudent idea for a starting NFL running back walking into a contract year off a major leg injury, but the team can’t reasonably praise one and rip the other. For Skattebo, it plays as an all-or-nothing habit — he’s not going to do a safer version of it.
That much became clear when he was asked directly about the “wild maniac” label attached to him since his rookie year.
“I totally enjoy that part. I think I less enjoy the brain-dead kind of guy,” Skattebo said. “But it is what it is. I mean, the New York people love it, so I’m just gonna keep being me.”
The reaction online ran hot over the weekend, with some fans and commentators calling for the Giants to address it internally. Skip Bayless was among the loudest, publicly urging Harbaugh to fine Skattebo over the stunt, per Yardbarker. One widely shared post captured the fan mood.
Giants training camp opens for the full roster on July 28. That’s the real checkpoint here, not the Fanatics Fest stage. If Skattebo takes normal reps in camp with no setback, this becomes a viral footnote. If there’s any hitch, Saturday’s clip becomes the first thing anyone references.
In his eight games last season, Skattebo carried the ball 101 times for 410 yards and five touchdowns, adding 24 catches for 207 yards and two more scores through the air.
Cam Skattebo 2025 season by the numbers
| Category | Total |
|---|---|
| Games played | 8 |
| Rushing attempts | 101 |
| Rushing yards | 410 |
| Rushing touchdowns | 5 |
| Receptions | 24 |
| Receiving yards | 207 |
| Receiving touchdowns | 2 |
Stats via NFL.com.
