Malik Nabers was drafted to be the Giants’ No. 1 offensive option, and the prized rookie receiver certainly was all of that in the team’s Week 2 loss to the Commanders.
No. 1 on your scorecard was targeted 18 times and finished with 10 receptions for 127 yards — including the first touchdown of his NFL career — but a key drop late in the game.
Still, those targets accounted for twice as many as the rest of the team combined among the 28 passes thrown by Daniel Jones in the 21-18 defeat.
That left just four targets apiece for holdovers Darius Slayton and Wan’Dale Robinson and none for Jalen Hyatt or tight ends Daniel Bellinger and Theo Johnson.
“I think football sometimes is kind of like basketball, and you gotta roll with the hot hand,” Slayton, who led the Giants with 770 receiving yards last season, said of Nabers after Thursday’s practice in East Rutherford, N.J. “Malik was playing well, so they kept going to him, and he kept making plays. When a shooter’s making shots, you let him shoot. But obviously, eventually, there’s gonna come a time where somebody else is gonna have to make a play. So you gotta be ready.”
Nabers, the sixth-overall pick in the draft, registered five catches on seven targets in his NFL debut the previous week against the Vikings, with Robinson leading the way with a dozen targets.
“I think every week is going to be different,” offensive coordinator Mike Kafka said. “You look at the defense they present, you look at the matchups, and you try to put your best players in the positions to be successful. Within the game, that could change.
“Whether that’s the same or not [Sunday against the Browns] or in the future, I don’t know. You have to see how the game declares itself. But I think you always want to put your best player, your best scheme or your best players in those spots so that they can be successful.”
Hyatt hasn’t had much of a chance in the first two games of his second pro season to stretch defenses with his speed, barely getting on the field with one combined target across an 0-2 start.
“Jalin’s doing a great job in practice,” Kafka said. “He’s a pro. … And it’s just about getting him in the mix.”
Robinson at least snared a 7-yard touchdown from Jones in the fourth quarter against Washington, but he finished with two receptions for 18 yards on four targets.
“That’s just kind of the way the game went, and we just go with the ebbs and flows of it,” Robinson said. “You never know how a game’s gonna play out. It turned out to be a one-on-one game on the outside, and obviously, there ended up being a lot with Malik.
“In another game, someone else might have a bigger target share. You never know who might be the one in double digits. So we just have to all continue to work together and see how the game unfolds.”