Tom Rock: It would be a real shock if Giants' Malik Nabers doesn't play vs. Cowboys despite questionable tag
Giants wide receiver Malik Nabers on Aug. 11, 2026. Credit: Noah K. Murray
Questionable. Yep, that pretty much sums it up.
It’s the final injury designation the Giants gave Malik Nabers on Friday heading into Sunday night’s opener against the Cowboys. But it sheds very little light — perhaps purposefully, perhaps accurately — on what anyone can expect to happen when the teams take the field. Really, he’s been questionable for this game since he tore the ACL in his right knee last season, and he remained that way two days before kickoff.
Nabers certainly seems as if he is good to go. He was a full participant in every practice this week. He looked spry and confident in the parts of the workouts open to the media. The coaches commented on how he looked “ready.” Every physical indication suggests he will play, from where he lines up in drills (the front part of the line) to the extra work and route-running he puts in after practices with Jaxson Dart.
So why the question?
Because there is one more person who has to sign off on his return. It isn’t someone with a medical degree and it isn’t anyone who has won a Super Bowl ring as a coach.
It’s Nabers himself.
On Thursday, he announced that it will be his decision whether he suits up. And that call apparently has yet to be made.
“Everyone has to understand that, at the end of the day, it’s my career, it’s my body,” the third-year receiver said. “I know when I’m able to play, and I know when I’m able to do what I want to do. So everybody’s got to live with the decision on what I want to do with my career.”
The Jets, meanwhile, go into their Week 1 game with relatively better injury news.
Running back Breece Hall, who had missed time with a preseason groin strain, and rookie tight end Kenyon Sadiq, who had been sidelined most of the offseason while dealing with a hernia, received no injury designations. They’re good to go. Only edge rusher Joseph Ossai and wide receiver Tim Patrick will be out.
Hall, the team’s biggest injury question mark coming into the opener, seems to be just fine three-plus weeks after his scary spill in a training camp workout. He sat out the rest of the preseason but was back with the team earlier this week.
“I feel like I can do whatever I need to do for us to get the win,” Hall said after practice on Thursday. “I could have been out there a little bit earlier. I’m thankful [the trainers] were very cautious with me. It was a real good vacation, and I feel really fresh now.”
Nabers is the only Giants player with any injury status. It remains difficult to fathom a situation in which he does not play.
The Giants seem to have designed their 53-man roster (which is now at 52, with an opening) around the thinking that Nabers will play. They released Darius Slayton earlier this week, leaving only four active wide receivers. And Nabers has grinded through dark times and difficult rehabs from a pair of surgical procedures toward this opportunity for the past 10 months and had this date circled as the goal the entire time.
As he also said on Thursday:
“I put in the work and I did everything that I can to be in this position right now to be able to make the decision to play or to not play. If I am out there, I put in a great amount of work to know that I’m able to play and I’m able to do exactly what I know I can do and will do.”
But it’s still an “if” regarding whether he’s out there.
The NFL requires teams that play on Sunday to give that final injury designation by Friday afternoon, and the Giants complied as honestly as they could at that time. Nabers’ deadline still has a bit more to go. Perhaps right up until the inactives for the game are announced at about 6:45 p.m. on Sunday evening.
That means everyone from John Harbaugh to fantasy football managers, who likely have to make decisions on him long before that, to the fans who just hope Nabers can help the Giants beat the Cowboys are in a waiting game.
If he doesn’t play, there will be a lot of disappointment. The Giants will be a weaker team in this game for it. Offensive coordinator Matt Nagy said this week that Nabers is such a weapon that it’s “like having two wide receivers out there.” Now the potential exists that he will have neither of them.
Harbaugh, interestingly enough, is taking the situation a little better than the other groups probably are right now. Maybe he knows something. Maybe he has a feeling. But he called the uncertainty “normal NFL stuff.”
“It’s always unpredictable,” he said Friday of this bizarre waiting game that seems to go beyond gamesmanship. “To me, you can never rule out anything. I mean, in the world we live in, anything can happen at any time. So you never rule out anything. All things are possible, right?”
Or, in this case, questionable.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
