- Malik Nabers ran four 11-on-11 routes in a red non-contact jersey, his first live team work since the ACL tear.
- He caught all three of his 7-on-7 targets from Jaxson Dart, including a leaping grab over the middle.
- The Giants are +6500 to win Super Bowl LXI and +3500 to win the NFC at Bovada.
- New York hosts Dallas in Week 1 on Sept. 13, 27 days after Monday’s practice.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – Malik Nabers ran four routes in 11-on-11 team drills at New York Giants practice Monday, his first live team work since he tore the ACL and meniscus in his right knee in Week 4 of last season.
Four Reps Against A Live Defense
Nabers wore a red non-contact jersey and drew no target on the four team-drill routes. He caught all three of his 7-on-7 targets from Jaxson Dart in the same session, one of them a leaping grab in the middle of the field that he celebrated on the way up.
What changed Monday is the type of rep, not the number of them. The Giants had held Nabers to individual drills and walkthrough periods through the opening weeks of camp, work in which the routes are scripted and nobody is chasing him.
An 11-on-11 period is the first environment that puts unscripted defenders in front of a repaired knee and forces it to cut and react rather than run a known path. The red jersey keeps contact off the table for now, so the rehab has cleared the reaction test without yet clearing the collision one.
Nabers said the return to team drills mattered more to him than the workload. “Like I said, my soul’s been dead for so long just being away and knowing what I could’ve accomplished,” he told reporters after practice, according to NFL.com. “Being out there and having my teammates behind me kind of felt that soul come back to life.”
What New York Has Been Missing
Nabers caught 109 passes for 1,204 yards and seven touchdowns in 15 games as a rookie in 2024, a Giants single-season reception record. He had 16 catches for 251 yards and two touchdowns through the first three full games of 2025 before the knee gave out in the fourth.
Per game, that is 83.7 receiving yards on 5.3 catches last season, against 80.3 yards on 7.3 catches as a rookie. The volume dropped and the production did not, because the routes got deeper: 15.7 yards a catch in 2025 against 11.0 in 2024.
Three games is a thin sample, but it points at a receiver being used further downfield in Dart’s offense, and it is the version of Nabers the Giants have not had on the field since the second quarter of Dart’s first NFL start.
What The Board Pays On The Giants
New York is +6500 to win Super Bowl LXI and +3500 to win the NFC at Bovada, the only two markets on the board at USA gambling sites that price the Giants directly. The Super Bowl number implies roughly 1.5 percent, and whether the Giants’ real chance is better or worse than that is where the bet lives. Dallas, the Week 1 opponent, sits at +2200 and +1100 in the same two markets.
A team priced that long already assumes a poor season, which is why health news cuts asymmetrically here. A Nabers who plays a full schedule adds more to a number in the +6500 range than a Nabers who misses September takes off it, and the season-long futures at USA sportsbooks are where that shows up first.
Dallas Visits On Sept. 13
The Giants host the Cowboys at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, Sept. 13, at 8:20 p.m. ET on NBC, 27 days after Monday’s practice. Two preseason games fall in between, at Miami on Aug. 22 and at the Jets on Aug. 28.
Neither Nabers nor the Giants has attached a return date to the rehab. The next marker is a team period without the red jersey, the rep that puts contact back in front of the knee for the first time since Week 4.