Malik Nabers' knee is fine — fantasy drafters haven't caught up

Malik Nabers tore his ACL and meniscus in Week 4 of last season, going down on a deep shot from rookie QB Jaxson Dart against the Chargers at MetLife Stadium. It ended a rookie-year breakout that had him playing like a top receiver through the first month, and it left Giants fans bracing for a lost 2026 training camp. That bracing turned out to be unnecessary.

The wait ended this week. Jordan Raanan's update, relayed by Winks, put Nabers closer to Andrew Thomas' Week 3 comeback timeline than to a stint opening camp on PUP. SleeperNFL later confirmed the same reporting: Nabers is expected to avoid the PUP list altogether, and a Week 1 appearance is now a real possibility. That distinction matters more than it sounds — landing on PUP through camp and the preseason would have mechanically forced him to sit out the Giants' first 4 regular-season games, no matter how good his knee actually felt.

David J. Chao, who tracks injuries as ProFootballDoc, called it a great sign — noting he isn't even raising his own severity score yet, which for a torn ACL and meniscus recovery is about as clean an update as you can get this early. None of this means Nabers is guaranteed to suit up Week 1. Torn ACLs, especially ones that come with meniscus repair, are unpredictable, and coaches always hedge on timelines until a guy is actually cleared. But the tone of every report this week has shifted from "if" to "how close to himself."

That's where the fantasy angle kicks in. Winks has been arguing that even a diminished version of Nabers — his words, 85% of his career pace — would still score like Tee Higgins, A.J. Brown, Zay Flowers or Nico Collins did last year. That's the framing behind Yahoo Fantasy Football's take that Nabers might be the single most mispriced player in the game right now: a receiver getting drafted like an injury risk when the beat reporting increasingly reads like a normal recovery.

Before the injury, Nabers was in the middle of exactly the kind of season that makes people forget he plays on a bad offense — 18 catches, 271 yards and 2 touchdowns through 4 games, including a 9-catch, 167-yard, 2-touchdown outing against Dallas in Week 2. Winks' larger point is that Nabers put up those rookie numbers while the Giants were a bottom-5 scoring offense, which means the receiver's talent has never really needed a functional supporting cast to show up in the box score.

Winks has already moved Nabers up to WR25 overall off the PUP news alone, calling that outcome — a healthy-enough Nabers at 85% — an easy bet to take at his current price. If the Giants confirm he's full-go for Week 1 against Dallas, that ADP floor Winks keeps referencing won't hold for long. Right now it's still cheap. That won't last through August.