No one on the Giants called Malik Nabers out for costing his team the game with a fourth-down drop in Week 2 in Washington.
So Nabers did not need to repeatedly insist that “I was open” after Sunday’s embarrassing 28-3 loss to the Eagles with 119 yards of Giants offense.
Head coach Brian Daboll — for as long as he is this team’s head coach, anyway — has to shut this type of attitude down.
It’s fair to wonder how Nabers’ veteran teammates on offense will react to the rookie receiver’s answer to a question about whether the Eagles’ defense did anything differently than the Giants were expecting.
“No, I mean, nothing really different,” Nabers said. “I mean, watch the target tape. That was it. I was open. That was it.”
Nabers was asked if the lack of an established running game and balance in the offense made it difficult to move the ball.
“Yeah, but again, that’s not my job,” Nabers said. “My job is to run routes, get open and catch the ball.”
He had no catches in the second half and only two targets. Was there any difference between the first and second halves?
“I mean no. Like I said, I was open,” Nabers said.
No, the Giants win and lose as a team. Nabers’ comment seemingly implied that poor pass protection prevented him from having a better game.
“Just gotta do a better job of just making plays and protecting the quarterback and trying to do our best to score points,” Nabers said. “I mean, our defense did a hell of a job playing a good game. It’s hard when you’re going three and out and they get back out on the field. They’re tired. You’ve got to give our defense some time to get some breathers so when they go back out there, they’re still playing at a high level.”
Nabers has taken accountability before. He placed the blame squarely on his shoulders for the Washington drop in Week 2, even though his teammates wouldn’t say it. And he’s only 21 years old. But he can’t be saying “it wasn’t me” after games like this.
That’s dangerous especially because every player always has something to clean up.
FOX analyst and former quarterback Mark Sanchez, for example, critiqued Nabers’ stop-and-go route on a Jones deep shot to the rookie that was nearly intercepted late in the second quarter.
“I’m not totally sure if these guys are on the same page,” Sanchez said on the game broadcast. “He started to slow down right there and then didn’t totally expect that football out of the break based on the coverage. When you’re an elite receiver like this, you’ve got to start to learn quickly in this league that even when they put more attention on you, you can still be open and I still might try and fit you the ball. But I’ve got to be able to trust you to run full-speed every single route.”
It doesn’t help, though, when the head coach is pointing fingers, too.
When Jones was sacked on a 1st and 10 at the Eagles’ 44 with 4:33 remaining in the third quarter, Daboll could be seen gesturing downfield as if a receiver was open.
It looked like he was pointing at Nabers, who had run a long-developing deep route. But Jones already had been pressured and sacked before he could have thrown Nabers open on the play.
So add it near the top of Daboll’s long task list: Hold corner Deonte Banks for quitting on a play for the second time in four weeks, and discourage the rookie Nabers from throwing up his hands when the responsibility of a no-show performance must be shouldered by everyone involved.
