Transcript 0:00 All right, Matt Lombardo and Mike Tanier live here at MetLife Stadium, live in East Rutherford, following a Giants training camp where much of the time, Mike, was spent installing the offense- Yeah... 0:11 for the preseason opener against the Minnesota Vikings. But there was a major development during this practice. 0:17 Yeah, I gotta admit, I was getting a little surly, getting a little surly on the Scott sideline because it was a, like... Don't call it an installation period. Uh, like, Jo- uh, Coach Harbaugh has a separate word for it. 0:26 But then Malik Nabers, it was like the sunrise over East Rutherford. Malik Nabers appeared on the field, and that was a big moment for everyone. 0:33 Of course, and through this training camp when the Giants were down at the Greenbrier in West Virginia, there's been a lot of reports about Malik working on the side and working in individual drills. 0:42 Well, today you saw a glimpse of Malik Nabers on the field in some team periods, which was exciting to see. Mm-hmm. 0:49 And it seemed like when the Giants got the ball to Malik Nabers, it seemed from my vantage point, Mike, it energized the rest of the roster. Folks seemed excited to see Malik Nabers make a catch or two. Right. 0:59 Teammates seemed excited. Coaches seemed excited. A couple of the, the players talking afterwards talked about how they, everyone was whooping it up. Jackson Dart talked about the excitement of doing that. 1:08 And what happened is, I don't think he's been doing very much with elevens, full squad drills. Now, he was wearing his red do-not-touch jersey out there. 1:15 He was catching passes, a couple from Dart, one or two from Jameis Winston as well. He'd catch it, he'd go all the way to the house with it. Of course, there's no tackling. 1:23 He could go all the way to the house all the time. Did some, uh, some celebration afterwards, got everybody energized, got us a little bit en- energized. It's good to see Malik Nabers out there. 1:31 Great to see Malik Nabers out there because that's where the Giants offense is gonna funnel through. Yes. It's the play to Malik Nabers. 1:37 He's gonna open up so much space for the Malachi Fields's and the Darnell Mo- Darnell Mooneys, and Odell Beckham Jr. is still here. Yes. 1:44 and Drew Smith-Schuster is here, and Braxton Berrios is having a strong camp, uh, I've been told by a couple people. But Malik Nabers back on the field. There was an incident before practice- Yeah... though. 1:53 During, during practice. Yeah, so the very beginning of individual drills. Why don't you set this up and, and explain to everybody what happened? 1:59 Okay, and this was coming directly from Coach Harbaugh, and we also to- ta- talked to Coach Chad Hall, the wide receivers coach. And again, now Nabers is in a do-not-touch red jersey. 2:08 He's running some individual drills against the coaches. A lot of times the coaches will pretend to be a defender, p- pretend to be a cornerback while the players run their routes. 2:15 So as, uh, Coach Hall described it, they gave each other a look where, uh, Nabers thought he was gonna go one way, the coach thought he was gonna go the other way. 2:24 They went in the same direction, and Malik Nabers wound up tagging pretty hard Chad Hall in the face when he was making, like, a, a move to get open. So much so that Chad Hall, we saw him. He's got a little blood on him. 2:36 He needed stitches. Yeah, I, I wasn't sure. When the Giants had their assistant coach availability today, and I wasn't quite sure, is, is that Chad Hall in the... Then I noticed the blood- Yeah, yeah... 2:43 on the sleeve, and I'm like- Yes... "Okay, after John Harbaugh told this story, that must be Chad Hall." Uh, but total football guy. Yeah. Takes a helmet to the face or a punch to the face, depending- Yeah... 2:51 on who you, uh, told this, heard this story from, and he's still out there talking to the reporters today. Yeah. So Chad Hall, football guy, wins the Gutty of the, uh, Day Award here at Giants practice. 3:01 [laughs] Um, a- and if you're the Giants, you have to be optimistic just to be getting Malik Nabers back. And we're not... Uh, you know, you worry about making too much out of this. Coach Harbaugh called it a milestone. 3:10 Uh, one of the reporters, it might have been Art or, or Tom, asked him, you know, "Is this a milestone?" He's like, "That's accurate. This is a milestone. He wasn't able to do this up until now. He did it." 3:19 It's still a bounce in and out. He's still wearing that red jersey. 3:22 But for those of us who thought, like, oh, we might not be seeing Malik Nabers no more, this might be a thing where maybe it's week six, maybe it's week 10. You keep seeing a development to the point where he might... 3:30 I don't know about the opener. He's definitely not gonna be playing in the preseason at this point. 3:34 But you're going to see him sometime early in the season, and he looks hungry, he looks ready, and everybody's ready to get him back. 3:39 Yeah, there's been some reporting from ESPN's Jordan Raanan that there is optimism about week one for- Okay, okay... 3:45 Malik Nabers, which is a lot different than what you're hearing in some other camps for some other injured players. 3:49 And when you're this close into the preseason, this far into training camp, still less than a year, calendar year removed from right behind us- Yes... you know, suffering the knee injury. 3:58 Less than a year, and you're this close. You're back in 11-on-11 drills, even in a three-quarter speed practice. Right. That's a big step forward, and if you're the Giants, you have to feel pretty good about that. 4:07 Right, that's the big takeaway from today. Again, there's a lot of installation. There's a lot of preparation for, it's the Vikings, right? Yeah. They'll be playing the Vikings this weekend. 4:14 So, uh, th- they have one eye on that. There's not, there wasn't any hitting today. There was a ph- no physicality practice. 4:19 You get Malik Nabers back on the field, you get much more optimism, you get more m- excitement around this team. He's Mike Tanier. Follow him on Blue Sky @MikeTanier. Make sure you subscribe to The Two Deep Zone. 4:28 I'm Matt Lombardo. Subscribe to betweenthehashmarks.com. Check us out on YouTube at mattlombardo975, and you can follow me on Blue Sky as well. Uh, Mike, any final thoughts from East Rutherford? 4:38 I'm ready to get out of here, and I, I'll tell you what, Chad Hall, he had, maybe had two or three stitches. Think he needed four or five. 4:43 His Novocaine's wearing off right now, and I'm, I have a fun- funny feeling he's feeling it. 4:46 We'll talk to you next week on the Between the Hash Marks podcast, and, uh, have a great weekend, and enjoy the preseason, everybody.
