From the floor to the playoffs
WR Hodgins is cooking with the Giants
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Isaiah Hodgins’ breakout season with the Giants traces back to a mattress on the floor in a spare bedroom of a rental home in Orlando.
That’s where Hodgins slept for about six weeks this past summer, in a house rented by Draft Academy trainer Bert Whigham and Bills wide receiver Gabe Davis, to join their daily grind at the University of Central Florida.
“I went to Target, bought myself some sheets and a pillow, and stayed by myself in that spare bedroom,” Hodgins said Wednesday. “Bert would help cook us meals. I’d bring groceries over. We were just getting after it. It was nothing but work. No distractions, no parties, fun, vacations. None of that. It was just straight work the whole offseason.”
Hodgins, a 2020 Bills sixth-round pick, had torn his PCL in the 2021 preseason in Buffalo and spent the rest of his second NFL season on the practice squad. And he had decided that enough was enough, only two years removed from an 86-catch, 1,171yard, 13-touchdown junior season at Oregon State.
So he made the sacrifice and said goodbye temporarily to his wife, Maya, and son, Isaiah Jr., 2, for those six weeks to take his game to the next level.
“I kind of just made a decision in my head: I don’t want to be on the practice squad anymore,” Hodgins, 24, recalled. “I’m not gonna do this anymore. And that’s gonna come with my hard work in the offseason.”
There are some people who are surprised by Hodgins’ 33 catches, 351 yards and four touchdowns in eight games with the Giants since they claimed him off waivers from Buffalo on Nov. 2.
Whigham isn’t one of them.
“Isaiah wants to be great,” Whigham, who has trained the likes of Saquon Barkley, Dak Prescott, Derrick Henry, and Khalil Mack, said on the phone Wednesday. “A lot of players say they will come down and train. But it’s not easy. For six days a week, you have to put it over everything.
“On the Fourth of July, a lot of players are going to Vegas or taking flights to the Caribbean,” Whigham added. “He could have done that. Instead, he was training at UCF, at a college, not taking a break. It says a lot about someone. That’s why these results are not surprising.”
Hodgins put on seven pounds in six weeks. The humidity and grueling work took his conditioning to another level. There were no light days. They did heavy conditioning, speed work and ran routes daily.
Hodgins’ hard work got him signed to the Bills’ active roster in Week 4 and made him attractive in Week 9, to a Giants front office that already knew him well, when Buffalo cut him and kept wideout Jake Kumerow for special teams purposes.
Still, as talented and committed as Hodgins is, former teammates like Giants center Jon Feliciano still didn’t expect Hodgins to produce so quickly that he would be resting with the indispensable starters in the team’s Week 18 regular season finale with a playoff berth clinched.
“Honestly, I think he’s done a lot more than anyone could have expected,” Feliciano said Wednesday. “I think he was overshadowed in Buffalo because we had a really, really good receiving corps. And he was hurt.
“I was excited when we got him because I knew he had potential,” Feliciano continued. “But to say I expected him to be doing what he’s doing, that would be a lie. And I’m so ecstatic for him and proud of him. Every time he makes a play I’m proud of him because he works his tail off. He has a beautiful family, and I want him to keep going.”
Cooking for the playoffs
James Hodgins, 45, played in two Super Bowls as a fullback with the Los Angeles Rams. He won Super Bowl XXXIV with the Rams, 23-16, on Mike Jones’ famous tackle of the Tennessee Titans’ Kevin Dyson at the 1-yard line as time expired.
But on Wednesday night, Hodgins and his wife, Stephanie, were cooking for their son in Isaiah’s New Jersey townhouse, supporting him ahead of his playoff debut.
“Tonight was vegan mac and cheese, corn bread and vegan sausage with barbecue string beans,” James Hodgins said on the phone late Wednesday. “That’s his go-to meal.”
James Hodgins laughed when asked if this is how he ate when he was a player.
“This is plant-based and healthy,” he said of Isaiah, who also eats fish. “We were eating Popeyes chicken and Dunkin’ Donuts!”
Isaiah said he leans on his father all the time, and James pushes him toward good habits.
“He’s like, ‘I’m gonna cook you all these healthy meals so we’re ready for this playoff game,” Isaiah said. “He’s trying to motivate me every which way to take those extra steps.”
James coached Isaiah and his younger brother Isaac, an Oregon State defensive lineman, in high school. He taught them to persevere, and he likes what he sees from the Giants’ attitude under Brian Daboll entering this playoff run.
“Things I tried to impart are being a true professional, working to master his craft, putting in more work than what you’re paid for,” James Hodgins said. “That’s the approach we had with the Rams there for four years, when we went to two Super Bowls. There wasn’t a time limit on how long we had to be at the facility. We stayed after and watched film.
“Everyone was a part of the win,” he added, “and I see a lot of similarities with this Giants team. They’re not scoring as many points, but that’s coming. They’re hard workers, grinders, they want to be great, there’s steady improvement, and that’s usually a sign of things about to happen.”
As of Wednesday, the family was trying to scrounge up some tickets for Sunday’s showdown at U.S. Bank Stadium. They wouldn’t just be there supporting their son. They’d be cheering on a guy who suddenly has become one of the Giants’ most important players.
Impacting the scoreboard
Hodgins has caught a touchdown in four of the last five games he’s played.
He had his best game against the Vikings on Christmas Eve, catching eight balls for 89 yards and a TD. He even roasted veteran corner Patrick Peterson for a 29-yard catch up the right sideline in the second quarter.
So how did Hodgins get claimed on Nov. 2 and have such an immediate impact? One factor is that he already knew Daboll’s offense inside and out.
“He was very familiar with it. So from the play standpoint he knew where he was supposed to be,” said injured wideout Sterling Shepard, who has worked with Hodgins at practice. “It just came down to making plays, and he’s come up with some pretty clutch plays for us.”
Third-string QB Davis Webb, Hodgins’ former Bills teammate, said that watching and learning from Bills veterans Stefon Diggs and Emmanuel Sanders unquestionably “helped him a bunch.”
“Watching Stef at that position,” Webb said, let Hodgins learn how to run routes and uncover not just as a pro but in this exact same offense. Diggs was running the routes on the outside, frankly, that Hodgins would have if he got the chance.
It’s just that the
Bills were a deep, Super-Bowl-contending roster. Giants O-lineman Jack Anderson, a 2021
Buffalo draft pick, can speak to the consequences of that.
“I think he just needed an opp,” Anderson said of Hodgins. “Buffalo’s a spot like I was a seventh-round pick, played well in the preseason and I got cut. So I think his situation was similar. He needed somewhere to really believe in him and take that next step, and I think he’s really running with it now.”
Manifesting the moment
James Hodgins played in eight playoff games with a 4-yard rushing TD against the Green Bay Packers in the 2001 divisional round. He feels Daboll has done a great job centering the Giants players for a postseason game.
“We were talking about it this week, and I think Daboll has the right approach to things,” he said. “Keep everything the same. I think that’s a good approach … Usually it’s the team that prepares best and doesn’t get distracted by the media and extra stuff that reaches playoffs and championship games. That’s how we handled it with the Rams.”
Hodgins’ father did say playoff football “is gonna feel faster out there” and “a little bit more intense” because “everything’s on the line.” But he believes his son is prepared to handle it.
Isaiah Hodgins, after all, has larger goals than being a feel-good contributor on an upstart team.
One night last summer, during their intense Orlando training, Hodgins and Davis and Whigham went to dinner with a large group of Davis’ friends and family. And Davis, a 2020 fourth-round pick who has caught 20 TDs in 47 games for the Bills, paid for everyone.
Hodgins got to see reallife proof of what he was working towards in the sweltering Florida heat.
“That’s a growing moment,” Whigham said. “He got to see someone drafted in the same class provide an example to all his old friends of what you can do in life, no matter your career, if you bust your a—. Everyone in the room saw how impressive it was that he could do that.”
Hodgins remembers that night well.
“Everybody wants to get close friends and family together for a big vacation, dinner and pay for everybody, and be able to say my hard work helped me do this,” he said. “So there was part of that, and it was cool to see Gabe do that for his close friends and family too. It was motivating and it was fun to be a part of.”
“Those are the things you get to do when you perform great on the field,” Whigham said. “Money comes with success. And success is a result of the work you put in.”