london Collins

DB’s electric return for TD the spark Big Blue needed

LONDON — At 343 pounds, Damon Harrison, aka “Snacks,’’ did not want to hear how great Landon Collins was with the ball in his hands and how his feet were moving like nobody’s business. Collins took an interception 44 yards for a touchdown, then got another pick early in the fourth quarter that he took back 18 yards.

This was nifty, nimble stuff, but the largest Giant of them all was not having it.

“I told him he looked pretty good on the first one, but the second was terrible,’’ Harrison said. “Agility, elusiveness, terrible. Not at all on the second one.’’

There was that sort of vibe Sunday after Collins made the most impactful play of a day when the Giants went old-school, using a ferocious pass rush up front and ball-hawking out back to secure a 17-10 victory over the Rams at historic Twickenham Stadium. It was fitting that at a venue called the “cathedral of rugby’’ the Giants were all about toughness and grit, with little to show for themselves as far as finesse, style points, and well, actual points.

No one around this team wants to believe the Giants are going to have to dominate this way on defense to make up for a crummy offense. It is not the way this was designed to operate. Plans change. The Giants never would have beaten the Cowboys, Saints or Rams if they had to depend on Eli Manning lighting up the scoreboard.

Manning said this trip would be an indicator of what the Giants are made of, how they handled a cross-Atlantic flight, a five-hour time difference, new surroundings, the hubbub of an unfamiliar city. The Giants found a way, and that way was defense, guided by a rising star.

His name is Landon Collins but for one day, it might well have been London Collins.

“Before every game he always comes to me, he tells me, ‘Big bro, get ready to see excellence,’” cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie told The Post, “and for seven weeks that’s what he gave me. I expect nothing less.’’

The Giants expect Collins to make jawrattling hits, and he was flying all over the pitch, er, field, laying waste to Rams ballcarriers. This is nothing especially new for Collins. He has had great difficulty coming up with interceptions, failing to track the ball in the air and, when he gets his hand on it, failing to secure it for the takeaway.

After a devastating drop of a rare Tom Brady duck doomed the Giants in a 2015 loss to the Patriots, Collins sounded nonplussed when he said, “It wasn’t my time.’’ If so, his time is now.

Ordinary players do not do what Col- lins did in the second quarter with the Giants trailing 10-3 and floundering. Rams quarterback Case Keenum deserved better than to have his second-quarter pass glance off the hands of Tavon Austin, and Collins racing in to snare the deflection was a good play. What happened next was spectacular, as his winding, twisting, field-shifting 44-yard touchdown return contained a little bit of everything and caused a whole lot of wonderment.

“I saw the heart, no matter what he wasn’t going down, running through guys, shifting field, you never seen Landon cut back like that,’’ said Rodgers-Cromartie, who also had two interceptions. “That’s usually a corner thing, me and Jackrabbit. To see him do it, that was amazing.’’

Jackrabbit, also known as Janoris Jenkins, enjoyed the show.

“He kind of looked like me,’’ Jackrabbit said, sitting back and smiling. “Nice moves. I feel like it was the biggest play of the game. It was a game-changer, a momentum-changer.’’ Of that there is no doubt. Manning and Co. can thank Collins for setting up the only touchdown for the mostly anemic offense. Collins, off a deflection from linebacker Keenan Robinson, put the Giants on the Rams’ 22-yard line when he got his second interception of the game and third of his 23-game NFL career.

“This is my game,’’ the affable Collins said. “I love the game, love the game of football. When an opportunity comes for me to make a play, I try my best to do something.’’

With the best game of his career coming on foreign soil, Collins returns home not yet a star, but on the way there.