Malik Nabers had “a talk” with Giants GM Joe Schoen and coach Brian Daboll after ripping the team’s “soft” play and the Daboll’s offense on Sunday.
And the rookie wide receiver said he still stands on what he said, even though he heard Schoen’s and Daboll’s side of the story.
“When I look at it, we tried to give me the ball a couple times in the first half, just had a lack of communication,” Nabers said. “We only had I think 15 plays in the first half. So if I had an opportunity to go back and change the words that I said, I would. But I still stand on what I said. I said it. I don’t have no regrets with what I said. But after looking at the film, we just lacked technique.”
Schoen and Daboll have definitely spent the early part of this week selling to the team that effort isn’t an issue for their 2-9 team, even though Sunday’s film shows it is.
Daboll’s Monday film session included clips of good effort. Schoen and Daboll told Nabers that they felt his “soft as f–k” review was off-base.
Left tackle Jermaine Eluemunor on Tuesday walked back his postgame insistence that he didn’t see everyone giving 100%.
“Sometimes it’s better to say less and do more,” Eluemunor said.
Dexter Lawrence even blamed the media for twisting his “soft” recap of the Giants’ embarrassing defeat.
“About the soft thing, I think you guys need to be held accountable for how you put it out there,” Lawrence said Tuesday. “I didn’t say we are soft as a team. I think I said we ‘played’ that way. We lost 30-7. That’s not OK.”
Nabers, 21, came out of his talk with Schoen and Daboll understanding they want the public messaging to be different. But all he did was emerge using different words to describe the same concerns.
“We talked about it,” Nabers said of his conversation with Schoen and Daboll. “They know I’m a competitor. They said after watching the film, they don’t think that we played soft, as I said after the game. After I looked at the game, it wasn’t soft. It was just a lack of technique, lack of communication and we just didn’t have the authority to go out there and win, I would say. We didn’t have the grit to go out there and win the game.”
The most fascinating part about Nabers’ outburst is that while it wasn’t a good look, he wasn’t wrong. And it’s refreshing that someone is being honest about bad it’s gotten here.
“I just don’t like losing,” Nabers said. “If I feel like if I had an opportunity to help the team win, I’m going to express that.”
Nabers rejected the notion that as a first-year player, he shouldn’t be speaking so strongly on the state of the team.
“Why not? Just because I’m a rookie?” he said. “I’m a part the team. I got added to this team to be a resource, to be somebody that can change the game. I’m not going to sit back just because I’m a younger guy and not speak on how I feel.
“They want me to speak up,” Nabers said of Schoen and Daboll. “They feel like my energy helps the offense, in a way, to be explosive. So of course I’m going to speak up if something doesn’t go my way. That’s just how I am. I’m not going to just sit back and just let it go down just because I’m a young player. Clout don’t mean nothing.
Nabers added: “I still play football. I play it at a high level. So whoever is saying I don’t have the authority to be speaking up, that’s on them. I don’t care.”
It’s worrisome that Daboll has so little control that a rookie can speak his mind so freely and critically about the entire team, but it could be constructive if the Giants actually listened to him.
In the first quarter of the Giants’ last five games, Nabers has a total of one catch for 13 yards on four targets. That’s unacceptable and inexplicable. It’s also clearly connected to their inability to score in the first half of the past two games.
It’s not like Nabers didn’t warn the Giants at the NFL Combine, as shown in HBO’s Hard Knocks, that he doesn’t take it well when he doesn’t receive the ball early. He explained why on Tuesday.
“If you start later on in a game, it’s like your body’s not ready,” Nabers said. “You come into the game prepared, right? If you take one quarter off, two quarters off, your body just starts lacking. It’s like you don’t even want to play no more. I’m not saying that’s how I feel. I’m just saying that’s your body.
“After football plays as an offense, after you get hit, you’re like, ‘All right, I’m ready to go.’ So that’s how I feel. I haven’t been feeling that way in the first or second quarter. So I get in the third quarter and I’m not as energetic as I was before. That’s all I was saying. I need to get the ball early so I can make a change on the game early on instead of just later on in the game.”
So now everyone in America knows: on Thanksgiving Day at Dallas, the Giants will be forcing the ball to Nabers against the Cowboys to seek a badly-needed spark.
Does Nabers think the Giants are in a place where they can find the grit and authority on Thursday that they were lacking against the Bucs?
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’re going to have to go out there and see. I can’t tell you how everything is going just off of two days getting back after a loss.”
He doesn’t know. He can’t say.
He’s just being honest, standing on business.
