Malik Nabers Looking to “Drop” This Negative in His Game

Nabers has five drops this season, incuding at least two that have come on critical downs.

Oct 28, 2024; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; New York Giants wide receiver Malik Nabers (1) warms up before playing the Pittsburgh Steelers at Acrisure Stadium. / Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

New York Giants wide receiver Malik Nabers wants the ball, preferably on every passing opportunity, if possible.

While that isn’t feasible, NAbers does get a large chunk of the pass targets to where he knows he has to make the catch. Yet so far this season, he has five dropped passes, at least one coming on a third down play.

“Sometimes it just happens. Like you can't control it. I mean you can try to figure out what you did on that drop or just try to switch your hands, but it's something that you just don't want to happen, but it just happens,” Nabers said. 

“So, I still think about it. I'm not going to lie, I still try to find a way every time I come in here is just to create that same play in my head or just how I dropped it, what I could have done better. So, I'm still always trying to get better at not dropping the ball.” 

During his three-year career at LSU, Nabers racked up 15 drops in 275 pass targets, which obviously wasn’t enough of a factor to hurt his draft stock.

But we’re also talking about a player who in the Giants' Week 2 loss to the Washington Commanders, had a huge drop on fourth down that he carried with him more so than his 10-catch, 127-yard breakout game.

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“As a receiver, you're going to drop the ball. You don't want to drop the ball,” he said. “There are some people that are better at catching the ball than others. But when you drop the ball, you just got to flush it and go back to the next one.”

Nabers readily admits he’s far from being the type of receiver he knows he can be. He spoke of continuing to learn the playbook and of trying to be better than he was the week before. 

He’s also trying to learn ways to thwart the extra attention he’s been receiving from opposing defenses, which he said consists of more bracket coverage as opposed to the one-on-one man coverage he saw earlier in the season.

“I've been getting double-teamed my whole career. I mean it’s nothing different,” he said, admitting that he takes the extra attention as a compliment. “It's just a new level. So, nothing new, just got to find another way to try to get open.”

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