The Giants passed on Michigan’s J.J. McCarthy and other top quarterbacks at No. 6 overall on Thursday night and drafted LSU wide receiver Malik Nabers.
They added a No. 1 wide receiver hoping to inject life into the NFL’s 30th ranked offense that averaged 15.6 points per game last year.
“Malik was our guy,” GM Joe Schoen said. “He’s a guy we targeted. We took him. You know the players who were on the board and we took him. He’s an explosive playmaker that can play multiple spots, can separate, has run after the catch, very good hands, very productive in a difficult conference.”
Schoen said the first thing he did was text Giants QB Daniel Jones to send him Nabers’ phone number and tell him about the pick.
Jones never got to play with Odell Beckham Jr., the Giants’ 2014 No. 12 overall pick out of LSU who was traded to Cleveland in the spring of 2019 before the Giants drafted the Duke QB.
But Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll now have given him Nabers, 20, another explosive Tiger who made 89 catches for 1,569 yards and 14 touchdowns last season as a unanimous All-American.
“I’m just trying to be the best football player I can possibly be for the Giants organization,” Nabers said on a conference call from the NFL Draft in Detroit. “I’m not coming in to try to replace Odell. I’m just trying to lead into my own legacy.”
Both Nabers and Daboll referred a couple times to the receiver’s “dog mentality.” Schoen, who has seen Nabers play two straight seasons against Florida State, said the receiver’s “toughness and competitiveness” stood out.
“Some of the best [receivers] I’ve been around, they have that,” Schoen said. “It goes back to that grit, that toughness, that tenacity. You can’t coach and teach that, and I think this kid possesses those traits.”
Nabers was arrested on Bourbon Street in New Orleans in February 2023 for the illegal carrying of a weapon, but the misdemeanor charge was later dropped. Schoen said the Giants did a lot of homework on Nabers the person and think highly of him.
They had him in for a top-30 visit and went to dinner with him a couple times during the pre-draft process.
“We’ve got an extensive process in terms of background on these guys,” Schoen said. “You can watch it. You can bring up the film and watch what happened. [Chief security officer] Jerry Meade does a phenomenal job for us, and we have some other resources we reach out to and use, whether it’s boots on the ground at the campus in the cities. So we’re very comfortable with players we turn the card in on.”
Nabers did not agree to be measured at the NFL Combine, an unusual step by an NFL prospect. But LSU listed him as 6-foot tall and 200 pounds. And Nabers astounded evaluators at LSU’s Pro Day, led by his 4.38 40-yard dash.
Nabers said during his conference call Thursday night that he likes his dynamic with Daboll, who told Nabers during one playful conversation that he thought he could guard the LSU receiver one-on-one.
The lingering question, however, is who will be throwing Nabers the ball after the Giants reportedly failed to trade up to No. 3 for North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye.
Schoen and Daboll are entering a pivotal Year 3 as a regime.
This is not a rebuilding draft for the Giants. This is a win-now draft.
This is a draft that Schoen and Daboll must use to set their team up to compete and win games in 2024.
They followed a 9-7-1 record, playoff berth and Wild Card victory in 2022 with a disastrous 6-11 season in 2023 marked by internal dysfunction and offensive ineptitude.
Since starting 6-1 in 2022, the Giants are 10-18-1 in their last 29 games.
Jones, Drew Lock and Tommy DeVito are the only quarterbacks on the Giants’ roster. Jones has sustained two significant neck injuries and is recovering from a torn right ACL.
The Giants aggressively scouted quarterbacks all fall, winter and spring, reinforcing the reality that they were seemingly preparing to lay the groundwork to move on from Jones in the near future.
Their attempt to trade to the No. 3 pick while New England was on the clock was the latest confirmation that Schoen and Daboll were trying to get Maye. As one source said a couple weeks before the draft, “Maye is the guy.”
But it turns out the Giants’ handful of wins down the stretch of their lost 2023 season, with Wink Martindale’s defense forcing ample turnovers and DeVito at QB, won New York out of a top 3 selection and potentially their QB of the future.
“Listen I’m ecstatic about Malik,” Schoen said. “Whatever’s, I don’t know what’s going on up there right now [during the first round], I know a couple quarterbacks just went. We’re gonna look at all positions across the board. We have multiple needs across the board on the team, and we’ll continue to try to fill those throughout the draft.
“There can still be movement,” he added. “We can get more picks. We can trade up. We’ve done that in the past. So we just got an electric wide receiver that’s 20 years old.”
The hope now is Nabers will help them win enough games in 2024 to continue building this program into the long term.
