Malik Nabers ramping up toward Week 1 return for Giants

It hasn't been a clean road back. Nabers tore his ACL and meniscus on a non-contact play against the Chargers late in the 2025 season, had surgery to repair it, and then needed a follow-up procedure this offseason to clean out scar tissue that was limiting his movement. For a while, the whisper was that he might not be back until October. Now the whispers have flipped.

That optimism has been building all week. SleeperNFL's daily injury roundup listed Nabers among the players squarely on track for Week 1, right alongside Patrick Mahomes, while several other names around the league were still fighting through hamstring, groin and triceps issues.

The clearest sign of progress came when Nabers reportedly ran 100 routes by himself off to the side of practice, the kind of solo volume work teams use to build a receiver's legs back up before throwing him into full team reps. That's not a guy being babied through a jog — that's a guy trying to get his conditioning back to game speed.

It's easy to forget just how good Nabers was before the injury. As a rookie in 2024, he caught 109 passes for 1,204 yards, breaking Puka Nacua's rookie wide receiver reception record and setting a new Giants franchise mark in the process — all while catching passes from four different quarterbacks. A receiver that productive in his first year, healthy again in year two, changes what New York's offense can even attempt to be.

Field Yates put it plainly in his camp recap: of everything that's happened across training camps so far, Nabers trending toward a Week 1 appearance is the single biggest fantasy development on his radar.

Nothing is official yet, and knee recoveries can turn on a dime — that's exactly what happened with the scar-tissue procedure earlier this year. But barring a setback, the Giants are trending toward getting their best offensive weapon back for the opener against the Cowboys, and that's a massive swing for a team that struggled to move the ball without him.