Big Blue View
And what does he have to do to get even better in 2025?
You may be among those who feel that New York GIants’ GM Joe Schoen made a mistake not taking a quarterback with the No. 6 draft pick in 2024. Perhaps the well-executed (in the sense of assets surrendered) trade-up to get Jaxson Dart has temporarily put those misgivings to rest.
It’s not exactly news, though, to say that the player they did draft in 2024, Malik Nabers, had a great rookie season. The question for this post is: How good exactly was Nabers’ 2024, and what does he need to work on to take the next step?
Usually we think of Nabers in comparison to the other two “big” wide receivers who were anticipated to go in the top 10, Marvin Harrison Jr. and Rome Odunze. Both of them had nice rookie seasons but Nabers was without a doubt the best of the three. Nabers’ competition for best rookie wide receiver instead came from his LSU teammate Brian Thomas Jr. and from Ladd McConkey:
All five had productive rookie seasons, but Nabers led them in targets and receptions (he was third overall in receptions behind Ja’Marr Chase and Amon-Ra St. Brown). Thomas had more yards, though, and Nabers only finished fourth among the rookies in TDs.
So the question is no longer whether Malik Nabers was a good draft pick. Clearly he was. The bigger question is: How good can he become? For the record, Nabers finished ninth in Pro Football Focus receiving grade among all wide receivers with at least 50 targets last season, behind Puka Nacua, Nico Collins, A.J. Brown, Mike Evans, St. Brown, Drake London, Tee Higgins, and Justin Jefferson. Fans tend to be suspicious of PFF grades, which are subjective, but it’s hard to disagree with that list as the current royalty of NFL receivers. In yards, Nabers was 11th, in yards per reception tied for 32nd, and in TDs tied for 18th.
Fans like hard stats such as yards, TDs, etc. The problem with hard stats for receivers is that there is a QB on the other end of every pass. If you look at the WR names mentioned above, the QBs on the other end included names like Burrow, Goff, Herbert, Stafford, Stroud, and Hurts. For Nabers, the names were Jones, Lock, and DeVito. On at least one occasion last season, the Giants’ loss to Philadelphia in October, Nabers was hardly targeted in the second half and he didn’t like it, saying, “Watch the tape...I was open.” That wasn’t quite true, but no one came out of the 2024 season thinking that the Giants’ QBs had fully tapped Nabers’ potential.
So it would seem that Nabers will have an opportunity to move up these lists in 2025 and beyond with names like Wilson, Winston, or Dart throwing to him. Nabers should also be better with a year of experience under his belt. That said, in which aspects of his game is...
