Malik Nabers’ “welcome to the NFL” moment happened before he completed his first pro practice.
The Giants’ first-round wide receiver arrived at the team’s facility in East Rutherford, N.J., on Friday for rookie minicamp and promptly walked back his $10,000 Rookie of the Year cash bet with Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels.
“I’m educated — now that I got here — about sports betting and gambling. We’re calling the bet off,” Nabers said of a wager he had publicized himself on The Pivot podcast. “There is no bet now. It was just another brother pushing another brother to try to get to success. That’s all it was.”
Daniels had confirmed the bet recently on Keyshawn Johnson’s “All Facts No Brakes” podcast, lamenting that Nabers had revealed it.
“Man, he wasn’t supposed to tell nobody,” Daniels said. “We got a little something going on.”
Both players then did the only thing they could do: backed off.
“Obviously we don’t want to get in trouble,” Daniels, the No. 2 overall pick in April’s draft, told reporters on Friday.
Nabers, 20, is the face of the Giants now. He plays in a league that hands out indefinite suspensions for the type of bet he and Daniels made.
This is, literally, the big leagues. And Nabers needs to learn how to carry himself that way quickly. Because this fall in games, Giants coach Brian Daboll will need Nabers to make the kind of play he made in Friday’s practice:
Undrafted rookie quarterback Liam Thompson threw a slant route to his right above and behind Nabers. And Nabers reached back and snatched the ball down with both hands, barely breaking stride upfield.
Nabers is so confident that he doesn’t impress himself. He views plays like that as routine.
He said it was “hard” for him, in fact, to have a dialed-back workload on the first day of minicamp, playing soft toss with wide receivers coach Mike Groh at certain points when other rookie tryouts were competing on the field.
“Coach Groh told me I wasn’t going to be participating in everything, and I told him, ‘why?’” said Nabers, whose long white sleeves and red gloves made him stand out on the field. “That competitiveness in me is always going to show… The level that I see myself playing, you know, as a player and as a competitive person, I’m always going to want to go fast.
“Coach Daboll tells me … ‘With this offense, you’ve got to slow it down and take it step by step. For you to be where you want to be, you’ve got to know what you’ve got to do,’” Nabers added. “For me to play at 100 miles per hour, I’ve still got to know what I got to do.”
Daboll has to strike a balance, however. Because while he doesn’t want to overload Nabers, he also needs to give him a crash course that has him prepared for Week 1 — both as a player and as a professional.
Nabers still hasn’t caught any passes from Daniel Jones or Drew Lock, but he has communicated with Daboll remotely while training to acclimate to the playbook. And Daboll said they’ll continue to feed Nabers more at a steady pace.
“What you don’t want is you don’t want players to give them so much where they’re not able to use their full athletic ability,” Daboll said. “I don’t mind players [whether they] are humble [or] confident, as long as they’re putting in the work to learn. That’s our job, is to help them learn. Ultimately, it’s their job to go ahead and learn it. The faster he can learn it, the more he can use his athletic ability to help us.”
Third-round pick Dru Phillips, a slot corner from Kentucky, said Nabers “just got here” on Friday, and they met for the first time. It turns out Nabers just bought his mom her first-ever house a week ago, fulfilling a lifelong dream, before signing his Giants’ rookie contract on Friday.
“That was the most important thing in my life, I would say,” Nabers said. “Having her have her own house and feel comfortable and not having to worry about bills to pay — and know that her little boy did it for her.”
Now it’s time for Nabers to learn his new role in north Jersey quickly and give the Giants something they haven’t had since Odell Beckham Jr.: a game-changing, score-at-any-moment star receiver.
As he found out already with his bet against Daniels, though, saying and doing the right things off the field can be just as steep a learning curve — and just as critical.
NUMBERS GAME
Nabers wore jersey No. 9 on Friday. He said it’s “just a temporary number for right now,” so fans shouldn’t rush to buy it just yet. He did admit, though, that he’ll watch himself in No. 9 on film “to see if I really want to keep it or not.” So stay tuned.
DABOLL DEFLECTS ON JONES
Daboll would not provide any clarity on whether Jones will participate in spring OTA practices.
“He’s been going through phase two. We’ll see where we are at in phase three,” Daboll said, referring in generalities to the NFL’s offseason program rules.
Quarterback Nathan Rourke, claimed recently off waivers, is not participating in rookie minicamp. That clearly demonstrates Rourke is here to play and compete with the full team in some capacity in the spring.
UDFAs SIGN, VETS TRY OUT
The Giants signed eight undrafted rookie free agents, including an exempt/international player: kicker Jude McAtamney of Northern Ireland, who played locally at Rutgers in college.
The other seven are offensive tackle Marcellus Johnson (Missouri) and guard Jake Kubas (North Dakota State), wide receivers John Jiles (West Florida) and Ayir Asante (Wyoming), defensive lineman Casey Rogers (Oregon), defensive back Alex Johnson (UCLA) and defensive end Ovie Oghoufo (LSU).
The Giants also waived/injured running back Deon Jackson after claiming Rourke and signing wide receiver Allen Robinson II this week. Jackson, 25, was a high school teammate of Giants left tackle Andrew Thomas and a college teammate of Jones.
His best opportunity so far came in 2022 with the Indianapolis Colts, when he had 68 carries for 236 yards and a touchdown, and 30 receptions for 209 yards and another score.
Meanwhile, there were three veteran tryouts on the field Friday: OLBs Shaka Toney and Myjai Sanders and WR Jared Bernhardt. The three quarterbacks on Friday were Thompson, Ben Bryant (Northwestern) and Blake Stenstrom (Princeton).
Fifth-round pick Tyrone Tracy Jr. (Purdue) signed his rookie contract this week, as well.
SNEE A ‘SENIOR’ SCOUT
Chris Snee, who was officially hired as a “senior scout,” walked out onto the practice field shoulder to shoulder with GM Joe Schoen. Then Snee immediately made his way over to the offensive linemen, where he observed their drills up close.
The team said Snee will be involved in both college and pro scouting. It will be interesting to track the impact of the two-time Super Bowl winning right guard on the Giants’ annual problem of constructing a serviceable line.
“I’m super excited about it,” Snee said. “I’m a Giant, and I always have been, despite having worn Jaguars clothes for four years when I scouted down there. Everyone knows my heart has always been here. This is where I feel like I belong and where I want to be, and I’m going to come in and work my tail off.”
