{"id":184967,"date":"2024-08-13T12:15:33","date_gmt":"2024-08-13T16:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/?p=184967"},"modified":"2024-08-12T11:49:20","modified_gmt":"2024-08-12T15:49:20","slug":"malik-nabers-shares-odd-connection-legendary-giants-wideout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2024\/08\/13\/malik-nabers-shares-odd-connection-legendary-giants-wideout\/","title":{"rendered":"Malik Nabers Shares Odd Connection to Legendary Giants Wideout"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s no shortage of great pass catchers who&#8217;ve donned the blue and white &#8220;NY.&#8221; With the New York Giants about to embark on the their 100th season, it feels customary to name drop the team&#8217;s most historic figures at the wide out position. Frank Gifford, Earnest Gray, Amani Toomer, Plaxico Burress, and Odell Beckham Jr all come to mind. Oddly enough, the latter has a connection with the guy Giant fans expect to join that list \u2014 No. 6 overall pick Malik Nabers.<\/p>\n<h2>Malik Nabers Breaks Down his Relationship with Odell Beckham Jr.<\/h2>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a pretty good relationship,&#8221; <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=29N7VrRB88Y\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">said Nabers<\/a> when Kay Adams of <em>Up &amp; Adams<\/em> asked whether or not Beckham Jr. has reached out to him yet. &#8220;He reached out a couple of times to make sure my head was on straight, time to go get it now that I&#8217;m here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But Nabers then revealed that the two had communicated once before \u2014 well, at least in one direction \u2014 during some of the rookie&#8217;s earliest days on the gridiron.<\/p>\n<h3>OBJ Slid in His DMs<\/h3>\n<p>&#8220;He actually sent me a text message,&#8221; Nabers said. &#8220;When I was like 12, 11 years-old I had sent him a text message. I was like, &#8216;My hands are too big to fit gloves,&#8217; because they only put so many gloves in academy but I couldn&#8217;t fit them cause my hands was too big. So I reached out to him cause I heard he had big hands.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Nabers went on to explain that his &#8220;text&#8221; was actually an Instagram DM and that Beckham Jr. left him on delivered. That was, until the night Nabers was drafted a few months ago.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;On the draft he did,&#8221; said Nabers. &#8220;He was like, &#8216;It looks like you don&#8217;t need those gloves anymore. You here now.&#8217; So that was a surreal moment that I had with Odell.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h3>Performance So Far<\/h3>\n<p>Nabers didn&#8217;t have any catches for any yards in New York&#8217;s preseason opener vs the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/category\/nfl-teams\/lions\/\" target=\"_self\">Detroit Lions<\/a> this past Thursday. He has flashed game-breaking potential <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2024\/08\/04\/2024-fantasy-football-profile-malik-nabers\/\" target=\"_self\">thus far in camp<\/a>, however, prompting himself up as the team&#8217;s next great wideout \u2014 a position that&#8217;s been vacant ever since <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2021\/03\/14\/odell-beckham-jr-trade-two-years-later\/\" target=\"_self\">New York traded Beckham Jr.<\/a> four and a half years ago. The Giants haven&#8217;t had a receiver tally 1,000 yards in a single regular season campaign since OBJ did in 2018.<\/p>\n<p>But Nabers isn&#8217;t the only young Giants route runner to get Beckham Jr.&#8217;s approval. After New York selected Jalin Hyatt last year and the former Tennessee Volunteer made a few <a  href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MarshallGreen_\/status\/1697090130392109442\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Beckham-like catches<\/a> at camp, comparisons between the two became hard to miss on any Giants fan&#8217;s timeline. When speculation arose regarding what number Hyatt might wear, Beckham endorsed him to take his old digits.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;ROCK OUT ONE THREE,&#8221; Beckham Jr. <a  href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MarshallGreen_\/status\/1697090130392109442\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wrote on X<\/a> before tagging Hyatt.<\/p>\n<p>While Hyatt last year didn&#8217;t have the sensational rookie season Beckham Jr. did, he did flash enough skills as a deep threat to spur continued excitement around him as a prospect. The now second-year man finished the season with 23 catches with for 373 yards but failed to find the endzone.<\/p>\n<p>Giants fans will surely hope for more out of him this coming season as well while they look for Nabers to live up to his own &#8220;OBJ expectations.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo Credit: NFL: New York Giants Training Camp USA Today<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New York Giants pass catcher Malik Nabers and one fan favorite receiver from the team&#8217;s past have some history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5258,"featured_media":184013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[32135,92,514],"class_list":["post-184967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-giants","tag-malik-nabers","tag-new-york-giants","tag-odell-beckham-jr"],"modified_by":"Mike Kashuba","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}