Opportunities abound for the New York Giants as they start the next phase of their off-season program. The Giants are holding their first round of Organized Team Activities (OTAs) in advance of Memorial Day, and it’s an opportunity for the Giants’ rookies to start establishing themselves before training camp.
There’s hope that rookie receiver Malachi Fields can take advantage of his opportunity with Malik Nabers rehabbing his surgically repaired knee. Fields isn’t the same kind of receiver that Nabers is,
but the hope is that he can be the kind of physical presence the Giants haven’t enjoyed since Hakeem Nicks’ prime.
The Giants clearly believe that he can emerge as a draft steal early in his career.
The Giants traded back into the third round, sacrificing two fourth-round picks and a fifth-round pick in the trade. After the draft, Giants’ assistant GM Brandon Brown said that the team believes Fields plays much faster than he times, and cited their A.I. tools as suggesting his actual game speed as being in the 4.4-second range.
Greg Cosell of NFL Films fame agrees with the Giants’ assessment.
He gave his brief evaluation of fields on the Ross Tucker podcast:
“There were times watching him at Notre Dame that he got on top of corners. You’re dealing with a guy who’s over 6-foot-4, 218, and let me tell you something, he catches everything. I mean, this guy has vice-grip hands, he can snatch the ball away from his frame, elite body control. He can contort, he can catch in contested situations, high-points the ball. I really like Malachi Fields.“
Fields was the darling of draft evaluators in the period between the Panini Senior Bowl and the 2026 NFL Scouting Combine. Pretty much everyone who went to the Senior Bowl practices came away impressed with Fields, and at one point Todd McShay was touting the Notre Dame product as a Top 5 receiver in the class.
The buzz fizzled after Fields turned in a 4.61-second 40-yard dash and an overall athletic profile that matched what we saw on tape at Notre Dame: A receiver with excellent size and leaping ability, but limited speed and agility.
So can Fields build on his Senior Bowl week and prove that to be who he is? The Giants have only held two practices as of this writing, but the buzz is once again building toward proving Cosell — and the Giants — right.
Chris’ thoughts
I’ll admit, I wasn’t high on Fields prior to the draft and was lower on him than many evaluators were by the time the draft rolled around. My report on him was written prior to what was — by all accounts — an excellent week of practice at the Senior Bowl, so I wasn’t able to take that into consideration.
Cosell noted Fields’ size, body control, and hands, and those absolutely show up on tape. Personally, I had Fields as an early Day 3 value due to concerns about his ability to separate from tight coverage.
That said, there were evaluators who had more positive reviews. Lance Zierlein of NFL.com had a third-round grade on Fields, while Dane Brugler’s evaluation was relatively glowing:
Fields flashes both build-up speed and short-area juice, along with a go-and-get-it gear when the ball is in the air. He displays impressive reflexes at the catch point and deftly takes advantage of every inch of his frame to reel in throws. NFL coaches will like the way he uses his hands and feet to gain a step of separation out of breaks, although they will want to see him expand his route proficiency (there is a healthy amount of hitches and go routes all over his tape).
Interestingly, Todd McShay had Fields as the 74th player on his Big Board — exactly where the Giants drafted him.
Fields’s flashes are intoxicating; he’s a fluid, big-bodied receiver who adjusts beautifully to the ball downfield. His analytical profile, on the other hand, is frightening. Therein lies the debate with Fields. But unlike early-round “bust” comps being thrown out there—such as Keon Coleman, Jonathan Mingo, and Van Jefferson—Fields has outstanding agility for his frame and tempos his routes with savvy. While he may not be a true WR1 as an X receiver, he could quickly develop into an inside-out vertical weapon, similar to Tee Higgins.
The analytic profile McShay mentions is that while Fields is one of the most frequently targeted players in the class on third downs and in contested situations, he actually struggled in those situations.
Also, 26 percent of Fields’s career targets were contested, and his open target rate is one of the worst among the draftable receivers in this class. Finally, he ranks in the top five in this class of receivers in career contested targets, with 74, but he hauled in only 47 percent of them.
That lines up with what I saw on film, but didn’t have the stats to quantify. I noted that Fields excelled at finding voids in zone coverage (he separated at 11.4 points above class average against zone, per PFF), but struggled against man coverage (5 points below average against class average).
None of that means that Fields will bust. I’m a strong believer that traits aren’t skills sets, and skills are how a player employs his traits. I tend to believe that Fields will land somewhere on a spectrum between Isaiah Hodgins and Drake London based on his traits as a big-bodied receiver with limited speed but an excellent catch radius and body control.
I don’t see any reason why he can’t land towards the top of that spectrum and be a similar player to Michael Pittman, Tee Higgins, or Drake London. He’ll need to become a true route technician and play with a consistently aggressive “My Ball” attitude at the catch point. The Giants seemed to have drafted with an emphasis on an “All-Ball” mentality, and the odds are in Fields’ favor of reaching his ceiling if he attacks this summer with that mentality.
The early returns seem to be positive, with Fields making the “play of the day” in the Giants’ first OTA:
Rookie wide receiver Malachi Fields made the catch of the day, snagging a pass from Jaxson Dart with one hand while turning backwards. The Giants traded up to select the 6-foot-4, 222-pound Notre Dame product in the third round with plays like that in mind.
Fields can help ease a lot of the concerns regarding the Giants’ receiving corps and passing attack early in the season if he can approach his ceiling sooner rather than later.
