Giants Topple Saints Behind David Wilson's 3 Touchdowns and Eli Manning's 4 EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - David Wilson's trademark is the back flip and once, on a particularly energetic day in college, the Giants" backup running back performed 21 back flips in a row in a YouTube classic. So far this year, it only feels as if the Giants" season has had that many. On Sunday, Wilson's three touchdowns - and subsequent heels-over-head spectaculars - guided the Giants to a 52-27 victory over the New Orleans Saints, an explosive win which, in the spirit of up-and-down acrobatics, came one game after a dispiriting loss to Washington. (Which came one game after a blowout win over Green Bay. Which came one game after an atrocious showing against Cincinnati.) While Coach Tom Coughlin surely hopes for more consistency in his team's final three games, he knows that at this point, he cannot afford to be picky. On a day when Washington and Dallas both won, the Giants did, too, maintaining their one-game lead in the N.F.C. East with difficult games at Atlanta and at Baltimore looming. Of course, the Giants" task will be significantly easier - regardless of the opponent - if they get the sort of performance from Wilson they received Sunday. Wilson, a rookie from Virginia Tech, has endured a difficult season - he was benched after fumbling on his first N.F.L. carry in the Giants" opening game - but broke out against the Saints in place of the ailing Ahmad Bradshaw, recording 227 kickoff return yards, 100 rushing yards and his second, third and fourth professional touchdowns. Wilson became the first player in league history to total 200 return yards and 100 rushing yards in the same game. "Now that it's on tape, we're going to expect that from him every game," defensive end Justin Tuck said, presumably jokingly. He added, "I don't know what took him so long." That has been a recurrent theme from Wilson's teammates, who constantly rave about his agility. Several players have emphatically declared Wilson the best athlete on the team, including Victor Cruz, who is not exactly oafish himself. "If you blink once or twice, you might miss him," Cruz said of Wilson's speed. Still, for all he showed in practice, Wilson struggled to produce similar results in games until Sunday. In what fullback Henry Hynoski called "clearly his coming-out party," Wilson dominated, reaching the end zone in a mélange of fashions. One score came on a 97-yard kickoff return, the Giants" first kickoff return for a touchdown in five years. The second came on a hard-fought surge from 6 yards out, with Wilson twisting to extend his arm across the goal line just before he hit the ground. The last came on a 52-yard sprint to the outside that looked more like the anchor leg of a relay race than a battling football run. Asked afterward if he expected to have a game like this, Wilson initially said no; in fact, he said, he felt so tired and sluggish Saturday night that he immediately went to his room after team meetings so he could go to bed early. A moment or two later, though, Wilson reconsidered. In retrospect, he mused, there may have been some signs. Wilson fell asleep watching a Bo Jackson documentary and - considering what he did after he woke up - allowed that "maybe I was dreaming a bit about that." Wilson added that on Friday, when the special-teams coordinator Tom Quinn handed out assignment sheets to his unit, Wilson did not receive one. When Wilson asked Quinn why, Quinn told him he did not need one. "Just run fast," Quinn said, and the simple plan clearly worked. "I think I'm done with assignment sheets," Wilson said. The Saints, on the other hand, would appear to need some considerable fixes. Though Drew Brees pulled them to 35-27 late in the third quarter, they simply could not overcome their mistakes. New Orleans turned the ball over four times and was a mess on special teams, allowing the Giants to dominate field position throughout the game. Even when the Saints tried to be smart, it backfired; after being burned by Wilson's returns, they chipped a short, high kickoff away from him in the third quarter that Jerrel Jernigan fielded and returned 60 yards. Brees finished with 354 yards passing but threw two interceptions, both picked off by safety Stevie Brown. It was Brees's first loss against the Giants in five games and essentially extinguished any lingering playoff hopes the Saints might have had in their erratic post-bounty-scandal season. In addition to Wilson's theatrics, the Giants also received four touchdown passes from Eli Manning (to counteract two interceptions) as well as 121 receiving yards from Cruz, who scored a touchdown and offered a musical contrast to Wilson's end zone celebration by doing his patented salsa. Asked to compare the two public displays, Wilson was diplomatic. "Not that many people can dance, and not that many people can flip," he said. I think each has its own spice. The victory was critical given what had occurred only minutes before kickoff. Most of the Giants" players and coaches were otherwise occupied and not watching when the Cowboys (on a last-second field goal) and the Redskins (on an overtime field goal) won, but many players knew the results and were acutely aware that the meaning of their game had been amplified. Tuck acknowledged that the Giants have "been on a roller coaster" for much of this season, and for that reason, he and some other veteran players did not appear too excited about the blowout win. In the past, according to Tuck, the Giants may have reveled in their dominant performances - "I think we got caught up in our big wins," he said - so this time the attitude was different. "We need to be consistent now," Tuck said. Today, Green Bay - we played our style of football. Washington, Cincinnati - we didn't. And you see the results. In other words, yes, the Giants enjoyed Wilson's back flips. But with only three weeks remaining in the season, they would prefer to keep their feet planted squarely on the ground.