Recent evidence has led to the belief that New York Giants star wide receiver Malik Nabers won’t be ready for Week 1 as he grinds through his rehab from a complicated knee surgery. Giants’ GM Joe Schoen, though, is still a believer.
“I still think he’ll be fine Week 1,” Schoen told Yahoo Sports on Monday. “So we’ll see. He’s trending in the right direction. Again, these things take time, so it’s not instant. Every patient is different.”
The Giants open the season Sept. 13 with a Sunday Night Football
game against the Dallas Cowboys.
Nabers suffered a torn ACL and other injuries in a Week 4 game last season.
Giants head coach John Harbaugh did not sound optimistic about Nabers’ Week 1 availability when he spoke about it last month.
“He’s in the middle of it,” Harbaugh said after the Giants held their third OTA. “It’s such a hard thing. It’s an ACL and whatever else he had in that knee. Not a simple knee.
“He’s in the slog of it, the grind of it I would say. He’s fighting through it. He’s here every day, working hard at it. Just impossible to predict. The goal is to start the season, and get out there some time in training camp. We’ll see what happens. If he’s out there, great. If he’s not out there, great. We’ll be ready to go either way.
“I know he’s fighting like crazy to do his best to be out there,” Harbaugh said. “My experience with guys is the first time they have a serious injury, it’s tough because it’s new for him. It’s a tough process.”
Nabers participated in the Brian Burns Charity Softball Game a couple of weeks ago, and there were questions about how well he was moving around.
The Giants, of course, would be a better team with a healthy, productive Nabers in the lineup. Let’s hope Schoen’s optimism proves to be well-founded. If it doesn’t, and it takes Nabers a bit longer to be ready to compete at the NFL level, so be it.
