Why Giants' coach John Harbaugh is backing Cam Skattebo's plan to defy the NFL rulebook

New York's running back refuses to change his hard-nosed approach and his coach wants clarity from the league Oct 27, 2026 at 11:01 am ET • 2 min read After becoming the first offensive player all season to get flagged for lowering his helmet into a defender, Giants running back Cam Skattebo said he's not going to change his running style, even if it leads to more penalties. Normally, a head coach probably wouldn't be on board if his player was planning to defy the NFL rulebook, but John Harbaugh is backing Skattebo here. During an interview on Monday, the Giants head coach was asked about Skattebo's penalty, which came in the first quarter of New York's 27-21 win over the Houston Texans. On the play, Skattebo got called for unnecessary roughness after running over Texans safety M.J. Stewart. Harbaugh definitely didn't agree with the penalty flag and he vehemently defended Skattebo's running style during a press conference on Monday. "Skatt runs low. You have to run low. You have to run low to protect the football," Harbaugh said. "You have to run low to protect your body. You can't run in there and give tacklers your chest. When you run low, your head's down there, too. You can't move your head off your shoulders. It's a physical impossibility." Skattebo has already said that he's going to keep running low even if it leads to more penalties and Harbaugh has no problem with that, because he doesn't think his running back is doing anything illegal. "I'm quite sure Skatt's not trying to use his helmet as a weapon, as a battering ram," Harbaugh said. "It's not the way he's thinking. He's leading with his shoulder. That's what he's trying to do. He's trying to keep his head in a good, strong, upright position. But his pads are down there low. He runs low to the ground. That's a good thing, that's football. That's the way you're supposed to run. That's how you protect yourself and the football."If Skattebo starts running more straight up, that could mean that he'll take bigger hits, and as Harbaugh noted, it makes it tougher to protect the football. Skattebo's running style might be illegal by NFL standards, but Harbaugh isn't going to ask him to change a thing. "I didn't have a problem with the technique personally at all, but we haven't heard from the league," the Giants head coach said. Harbaugh has been an NFL head coach since 2008, so he knows the rule book inside and out, but he's just not sure what his player is supposed to do in this situation, so he'd like the NFL to fill him in. "Maybe they'll be able to enlighten us a little bit on it in terms of what they want us to teach, and that would be great," Harbaugh said of the NFL. This is certainly an interesting situation. You have a long-time head coach calling out the league over a subjective rule that almost never gets enforced. Although plenty of players have been fined this year for lowering their head, Skattebo was just the fourth player -- and first offensive player -- to actually be hit with a penalty. As Harbaugh noted, running low to the ground is something he likes to see from his running backs, and it seems bizarre for the NFL to penalize that. The league obviously doesn't want defenders lowering their helmet on a tackle, but penalizing an offensive player is a little more dicey. The NFL does fine players for lowering their helmet, and for now, that might be the fairest way to punish players like Skattebo.