Malik Nabers’ workload promises to be the major story of the upcoming week for the New York Giants. The star wide receiver, coming back from a pair of surgeries to repair a torn ACL, could participate in team drills for the first time as early as Monday afternoon.
Nabers wore a red jersey on Thursday for the first time while participating in team periods during what head coach John Harbaugh called a “no-physicality” jog through practice.
Nabers has yet to participate in 1-on-1, 7-on-7, or live 11-on-11
drills.
Last week, Harbaugh hinted that Nabers could do work in team periods this week.
“We’re looking towards soon ramping him up into some group periods and perhaps some team periods,” Harbaugh said. “Maybe next week, we’ll see. He’s doing great. He’s working hard. Spirits are high. And yeah, we’ll see where we’re at next week.”
That, of course, is now this week.
The Giants are on the road this Saturday to face the Miami Dolphins in their second preseason game. They will be in Miami on Thursday for a padded joint practice with the Dolphins. Nabers is unlikely to participate in either of those uncontrolled situations.
Normal practices, where the Giants can put Nabers in the red, non-contact, jersey, and control how aggressively he is covered by defenders, are different.
The Giants have not put a timeline on Nabers’ return to game action. The season-opener is Sunday, Sept. 13 against the Dallas Cowboys, and since training camp began last month in West Virginia, the speculation has always surrounded the idea of whether or not Nabers could be ready to play in that game.
Nabers has looked increasingly comfortable throughout camp running, cutting, and acrobatically adjusting to imperfectly thrown passes.
While in West Virginia, Harbaugh credited coordinator of rehabilitation and return to play Allie Boudreau with the work she had been doing with Nabers.
“She’s working with him. And she’s been working on situations where you’re off balance, up, landing off balance, and unpredictable type situations that you’re going to get, rather than just doing normal rehab, and then going out there and all of a sudden being surprised by the awkwardness of football,” Harbaugh said. “Try to create as much as you can in a controlled setting. And I think she’s doing a great job with that, and Malik’s working really hard on it.”
The next step for Nabers is to participate in some form of competitive drills. We will see if that happens on Monday, when the Giants will be in shells rather than full pads.
