Matt Nagy answered a question about Malik Nabers’ targets with a joke. Then, unprompted, he later made another telling joke about the same subject.
There is a little bit of truth in the best jokes. And there is a clear emphasis from the Giants offensive coordinator to get the ball to Nabers as much as possible.
“I guess some of that goes to the beginning of the season when he threatened me,” Nagy said before practice Thursday. “When you get threatened, you have to be able to make something happen.”
Then later, when asked about Malachi Fields: “He can give us a lot more, [but] the deal is there’s only one football. So, we have this fiduciary responsibility to get Malik a bunch of catches, right?”
At a time when star receivers around the league — and in particular, across town with Garrett Wilson and the Jets — are struggling to get targets, Nabers is being peppered with passes.
And he has delivered a superstar-level output — in the four games in October, he recorded 36 receptions (on 51 targets) for 509 yards and two touchdowns. The 36 catches were second most in the league during that span. He surpassed 100 receiving yards in all four games — tied for the longest active streak in the league and tied for the second-longest streak in franchise history, after Odell Beckham Jr. did it in 2014. He was named NFC Offensive Player of the Month.
That streak — and a chance to beat Beckham’s franchise-record six straight games with 100-plus yards (set in 2015) — could be in jeopardy during Sunday’s game against the Eagles in Philadelphia, as Nabers is dealing with a knee issue that held him out of practice Thursday. But Nabers said “I’ll be good” for Sunday and did not at all seem worried. He was not on the injury report Wednesday.
Nabers praised Nagy for finding ways to get him open. But he also credited his own play-design talent as a reason his ability has been maximized.
“[Nagy] knows I’m smart, he knows I know how to get myself the ball,” Nabers said. “He knows I know how to get other people the ball, also. I think he’s taking that into account, just that I’m a smart player. I know what defenses are gonna give us in certain looks. And I’m gonna give them the best opportunity to get us the football. … I know how to draw plays up and look at defenses and understand what kind of scheme are they doing. And how to beat it.”
It’s something Nabers learned in college. Now, the Giants are giving him a lot of input into scheming plays.
“Just with looking at defenses, just understanding other plays [against them] I saw in the league, what are their struggles?” Nabers said. “And how to make everything look the same that they have seen in previous weeks and that they covered, but if you tweak it a little bit, [now] they can’t cover it. Or certain things that they gave up big plays on, just go at them again, hit them with the same thing. Or make them think it’s the same thing that they worked on in practice and then it’s totally something different.”
He does not even need to be open. He has programmed J.J. McCarthy that when in doubt, toss it up to him and let him make a contested catch.
“Don’t think too hard about it,” Nabers said of his message to McCarthy. “Just let us go be who we are.”
The Giants are letting Nabers be exactly who he is.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
