Best of the Giants on WFAN: Will Malik Nabers play Week 1?

Craig Carton (0:00)

We do have to start the show the way Evan wanted us to start the show, Tiki, which is simply this. F you, Mets.

Tiki Barber (0:07)

Mr. Five and Fly goes six and doesn't give up a hit after the first inning? I mean, what the hell, Freddie Peralta?

Craig Carton (0:14)

Yeah, what a freaking disgrace. So you have Freddie Peralta, you trade him, and you figure, and Evan with that big prediction at the end of the show yesterday, hey, they're going to tattoo him. And Freddie Peralta looked exactly like the Freddie Peralta the Mets traded for. So the Yankees get zero help from the Mets last night. The Yankees do help themselves, and more on that later with Spencer Jones, who basically is playing his way into a spot on the postseason every day line up, if Aaron Boone and Brian Cashman collaborate. But Tiki, look, with the kids going on the school buses, you know, throughout at least New York, I know New York City is a little different. Jersey, too?

Jersey had started, so not next week. Yep, Jersey started.

Tiki Barber (0:49)

My kids went this morning as well, same as you.

Craig Carton (0:51)

Okay, so they, wow, okay, I thought there was some confusion. So Jersey did start as well. So these kids are all in school. And I don't know about you, Tiki, but when I went to school, junior high, high school, the first thing on my mind was to get together with my buddies for the first time and start picking, you know, who's going to win some division? So football is on my mind because school is back on my mind. And I want to start with this, Tiki, and that is something that you, and I give you a lot of credit for, you have been steadfast in the notion of don't expect Malik Nabers out there in week one, despite all of the signals and all of the arrows and all of the clues that have signaled that Malik Nabers would, in fact, be ready for week one. So for anybody that might have missed it yesterday, I know it's a very busy week. We kind of get the first bump in reports that Malik Nabers is not out there for the media portion in the beginning of practice, and we kind of get some alarm fire tweets sent out, Connor Hughes, we love you, Connor, but you know, basically sent panic to everybody. And then as it turned out, Malik Nabers, as the media was walking back in, was walking out fully dressed, fully padded up, and it felt very cloak and dagger by the Giants, like almost like are they playing games? So let's listen to what John Harbaugh had to say about Malik Nabers and the way they're handling him in this week and a half, and what exactly happened yesterday. Ray, fire it away.

John Harbaugh (2:12)

He worked with the trainers for a little bit early, and he came out and was involved in most of the team reps.

Craig Carton (2:16)

What's that plan?

John Harbaugh (2:18)

It's day to day. He's kind of working through what he needs from one day to the next. So he was with Allie for some period of time, and he was out there for most of the team reps.

Craig Carton (2:27)

Tiki, you are going to be Mr. Decipher Tiki. But let me just lay you out the thought from Giant fans. You have half the Giant fans that hear, all right, he was out there and he did most of the team reps, and you have them going off what John Harbaugh said. He doesn't want to make any promises earlier in the week, but it's fair to connect the dots to be ready for week one. And then you have the other half going, well, wait a minute. He was with trainers inside, and now you're calling this, whatever's going to happen is day to day.

Tiki Barber (2:53)

Yes.

Craig Carton (2:53)

How the hell do you read into that?

Tiki Barber (2:55)

Well, it's what I suspected really for the last two months when we've been talking about this. Ever since he had that second procedure, it kind of came out of nowhere with the meniscus repair scar tissue, I believe, is how it was described to clean it up. You do those things because you're getting swelling. You have your ACL surgery, it's easy to fix the ACL. It's long history of successes fixing ACLs. That's fine. But he also had a meniscus issue. And having to have that redone was a warning sign to me about how quickly he was going to be able to get back. And now you're seeing that.