Fantasy Football: The Giants' Past Shouldn't Scare Us Off Malik Nabers

If you remove the uniform and the faces around him, Malik Nabers would be pretty darn attractive as a rookie in fantasy football. However, context within a player's situation is the entire challenge of fantasy football, so we can't do that.

With the sixth overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, the New York Giants selected Nabers this past spring in hopes that the former LSU Tigers star would jumpstart their underwhelming passing attack from a year ago. A chicken-or-the-egg dilemma was certainly present; it was impossible to tell if it was Daniel Jones (and those who proceeded him following an ACL tear) was the problem or if it was a lack of weaponry and protection from Big Blue.

The insertion of Nabers will likely take away the chance it's the latter, but the possibility of the former could easily harm Malik's production in 2024 and make us wish we forgot about him altogether in drafts.

In a pivotal year for the G-Men to win a few games, will Nabers erupt and demonstrate he's already a top-10 talent at wideout in the league, or will the Giants' offense make him an afterthought until New York can upgrade their quarterback?

Malik Nabers Fantasy Football Outlook

The Latest Alum of Wide Receiver U

Without any sort of true film expertise, I pegged Malik Nabers as the 2024 Draft's top wideout. While some were enthralled with the technical excellence of Marvin Harrison Jr., who went two spots before Nabers, you can't argue that Nabers had the better 2023 college season.

At LSU, Nabers was third among FBS WRs in target share (35.7%) and seventh in yardage share (38.8%) despite playing alongside another first-round pick, Brian Thomas Jr.. Without another 2024 draftee on his roster, MHJ drew just 32.1% of his team's targets and 35.9% of his team's yards. If targets are earned, Nabers was open a significantly higher percentage of the time -- even if you want to blame Harrison Jr.'s quarterback for the drop in counting stats.

With athletic comparables that are bizarrely similar to another former Fighting Tiger, Ja'Marr Chase, Malik proved he could be both LSU's volume wideout and a big-play threat. Despite the heavy amount of work, he averaged 18.0 yards per reception with 14 touchdowns in the heart of the SEC.

A Chase-like projection for Nabers -- regardless of how good his offense or expected role is -- will vault him into the top-20 fantasy wide receivers nearly immediately. The reason Chase could produce with Jake Browning last season -- or Justin Jefferson could produce with Nick Mullens -- in a fantasy-relevant way is downfield separation. Amon-Ra St. Brown or Cooper Kupp need the right system, quarterback, and position in the slot to effectively produce fantasy points; the elite of the elite get open deep downfield and catch passes for anyone.

Nabers is currently the WR27 in FanDuel's best-ball drafts with an average draft position (ADP) of 150.8. If his talent is truly this special, he'll cruise past that regardless of situation, but don't discount exactly how New York as a decent spot to produce fantasy points, too.

The Difference a Year Makes

It's actually kind of amusing that the Giants are largely seen as this embarrassing black hole for NFL success. While they've failed to top six wins in six of the last seven seasons, the recent outlier in 2022 is a pretty strong argument for head coach Brian Daboll and the team's infrastructure.

In that year, the G-Men went 9-7-1, won a playoff game, and Daboll was the NFL's AP Coach of the Year. No one was been painfully down on the Giants' ability to move the ball entering last season, but everything moved against them. Jones regressed from -0.04 expected points added per drop back (EPA/db) in 2022 to -0.33 EPA/db in 2023, per NFL's NextGenStats. The Giants sniffed around QBs at the pick used to select Nabers, so they know Jones isn't perfect, but he can be more productive than he was last season, and the new No. 1 receiver should help.

Their weaponry is probably where 2023's hopes and dreams died. Their offseason coup of tight end Darren Waller was a total flop; he missed five games to injury and totaled just 552 receiving yards as a shell of his former self. No Giants wideout posted a target share over 19.0% or 775 receiving yards behind him. Wan'Dale Robinson is a slot threat, Jalin Hyatt is a deep threat with a small route tree, and the team needed Waller to be a versatile threat to let them be compliments. Now, that's potentially Nabers.

As the guy projecting the Giants to win fewer than six games based on their defensive secondary and an offense that likely won't improve to elite overnight from numberFire's third-worst schedule-adjusted unit last season, even I'm realistic that Daboll, Jones, and this offense have a path to an outcome much better than what we saw last season. If Nabers is truly an elite talent, they can help him flourish.

A Diva Wideout's Dream

Nabers' ADP of WR27 is much higher than we've seen rookies historically. In 2023, Jordan Addison was the first rookie WR off the board as the WR37 on average, per FantasyPros' historical data. In 2022, Drake London was the WR41 as first off the board. Forget Nabers; the aforementioned Harrison Jr. is going as the WR9 this season. Why the shift?

Typically, the most talented rookie wideouts are entering poor offenses. They were selected to bad teams, and less talented wideouts enter wideout rooms with more competition. Well, it just so happens that Harrison Jr. and Nabers are both waltzing into a situation begging them to command a target share encroaching 30.0% as outstanding prospects. New York's highest returning target share is Wan'Dale Robinson (18.6%), and there's only so much volume that can be funneled through his slot position.

I wouldn't invalidate Nabers' ability to handle it just because he's a rookie. Puka Nacua is quite literally an all-time production exception, but what Nacua's 2023 success does show is how quickly a rookie can take on work if they can handle it -- and it is asked from them. We established that, from a talent perspective, Nabers was extremely comfortable handling that sort of work from an NFL quarterback (Jayden Daniels) last season. It's also unbelievably certain that the Giants will ask that of Nabers when no longer able to lean on Saquon Barkley in the run game after entering Week 18 last year with the league's 10th-lowest pass rate over expectation.

Expect a heavy dose of the Giants' newfound weapon early and often this season.

Malik Nabers Fantasy Football Projection

Especially when factoring in the that Malik Nabers is a rookie entering a situation where numberFire itself is down on the passing offense, its season-long fantasy football projection of Nabers' rookie season is intriguing.

Matching his WR27 ADP on FanDuel, Nabers is numberFire's overall WR27 and the 89th-ranked player overall in half-PPR formats. That's on the basis of a fully healthy, 17-game projection of 91.1 catches on 136.8 targets, 1,102.5 receiving yards, and 5.7 receiving touchdowns. All of that wraps into 143.7 projected half-PPR fantasy points.

When looking at FanDuel Sportsbook's receiving props, Nabers' yardage line is set at 875.5 yards with a pick 'em to each side. His touchdown prop of 4.5 shows -132 odds to the over. With such stark comparisons to Chase, a 1,000-yard season in his rookie year seems like a solid proposition -- especially when he didn't miss a single college game to injury in three years.

There aren't many players I'm leaving with more in the fourth or fifth round of fantasy drafts this season than Nabers. While Marvin Harrison Jr. isn't overvalued at WR9 given the top role he's walking into with Kyler Murray, if we're accepting his potential in that situation, Nabers shouldn't be far behind in a similar one -- especially when he was a more productive college wideout last season.

Daniel Jones and Brian Daboll have a track record of enough success to think that Nabers should be able to produce given his enormous projected opportunity in a Giants offense that's likely to be trailing and/or in shootouts thanks to a weak secondary. I'm selecting the rookie over any of the Houston Texans' cannibalizing trio or D.K. Metcalf in a crowded Seattle Seahawks passing attack.

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The above author is a FanDuel employee and is not eligible to compete in public daily fantasy contests or place sports betting wagers on FanDuel. The advice provided by the author does not necessarily represent the views of FanDuel. Taking the author's advice will not guarantee a successful outcome. You should use your own judgment when participating in daily fantasy contests or placing sports wagers.