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EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Two days after the Fox broadcast of the New York Giants’ 19-11 win at the Philadelphia Eagles questioned his body language, Malik Nabers answered the criticism Tuesday and said the broadcast had attacked his character as a player and a teammate.
Early in the fourth quarter Sunday, with New York leading 13-8, quarterback J.J. McCarthy threw behind Nabers on an incompletion, and Fox cameras showed the receiver waving an arm. Play-by-play announcer Joe Davis said Nabers’ body language “has been terrible today,” and analyst Greg Olsen answered, “It’s just not good,” according to Pro Football Talk’s transcription of the broadcast. Nabers responded on social media after the game.
Nabers met with reporters Tuesday after practice at the Quest Diagnostics Training Center, two days before the Giants host the Washington Commanders on Thursday night, according to the team’s transcript.
“As far as speaking about who I was intending on the message to be received by, I think I said all I wanted to say,” Nabers said. “I just feel like the narrative on me is always all the bad body language things that people have been saying about me. But as far as that, if it’s a problem with anybody, the cameras can stay off me.”
“The thing about it is, don’t tell the world something that’s not me,” Nabers continued. “I’m [going to] speak up for myself all the time because there’s nobody else that’s going to be able to speak up for me. So, I’m going to use my own voice and be able to speak up about me being a bad teammate. And I felt like that was just a lie, just attacking my character as a football player and as a teammate. Like I said, I’ve never been on a team where anyone has called me a bad teammate that I know of.”
“So, I would just [inaudible] on that too because I couldn’t speak up for myself during the game when these things were said about me,” Nabers added. “I felt like after the game when I got the opportunity to hear those things, I had to speak up about that because those things [are] just not true.”
The Giants selected Nabers out of LSU with the sixth overall pick in 2024. As a rookie, he caught 109 passes for 1,204 yards and 7 touchdowns and made the Pro Bowl.
“And as far as just the bad body language thing, everybody’s always talking about my body language,” Nabers detailed. “Like I’ve said, my body language is the same all the time. Whether I’m having a good game, bad game, losing, winning. You can go [to] games and you can see it for yourself if you want to go look.”
“But as far as the bad body language and things being said that I was saying on the sideline, especially from people that’s watching the game, they don’t know what’s going on down on the field,” Nabers noted. “So, you don’t know what is being said, you don’t know if I’m mad, you don’t know if I’m not. That’s just really everything on it; is my body language is the same all the time. My facial expression is the same all the time. I think a lot of people just don’t know that because they don’t know me. And that’s okay, that’s okay. But just don’t tell the world who I am if you don’t know who I am. I just felt like I had to speak up for myself about that.”
Greg Olsen Says Fox Never Called Malik Nabers A Bad Teammate
Later in Sunday’s broadcast, sideline reporter Pam Oliver relayed that Nabers told her he demands excellence from everyone around him. Olsen then said there is a fine line between a receiver demanding the ball and taking away from his teammates’ success, and said a receiver should celebrate a teammate’s touchdown.
Olsen posted on X on Monday that “at no point did we ever say he was a bad teammate.” He accused the New York Post and USA Today of making up quotes and putting words in his mouth. As of Tuesday, Nabers had not spoken with Olsen since the game.
“I think that was two days ago, three days ago and I’m focusing on the game right now,” Nabers explained. “If he wants to reach out, he can reach out and we can have a simple conversation. But as far as, I’ve said what I said about the situation, I’m done with it.”
The first meeting between the Giants and Washington ended in a 27-27 tie on Oct. 11 at Northwest Stadium.
“Like we’ve said, we want to go 1-0 but this game is more than 1-0,” Nabers said. “It’s 2-0, just because the last game ended out in a tie that we should have had. So, both of us are fighting to get this game. We’re trying to go 2-0 since we lost the last one, well, since we finished off in a tie last time, which we should have won. But this game is the same as importance as every game, we’re going to try to go out there and give our best shot to get this dub.”
New York Giants Stand Behind Nabers Before Washington Commanders Game
Nabers caught 5 passes for 43 yards on 8 targets against Philadelphia, the first time since Week 3 he was held under 100 yards. He played in only four games in 2025 and returned this season from a serious knee injury. Through eight games, he ranks 11th in the NFL with 648 receiving yards and has four 100-yard games, ESPN’s Jordan Raanan reported. He also became the first Giants wide receiver named NFC Offensive Player of the Month.
“I would say during the game, my body language is I’m a competitor,” Nabers said. “One thing about it is that I’m an ultimate competitor in whether it’s going [well] or if it’s going bad. If I make a play, my body language is I’m a mean guy, raging, slapping my helmet, screaming, never really smiling, but that’s just how I play the game of football. I put a lot of stuff into it. I had to put a lot of great work in to get back on the field. I feel like I hold everybody to that standard to play just like that, play mean.”
“It was [the] bye week and we came off flat, we came off slow,” Nabers continued. “And I was just trying to set an example of like, let’s get everybody going and my way of getting everybody going, it’s not going [to] everybody tapping them on the leg and being nice. No, it’s a game like, wake up, let’s go. I’m an aggressive person when it comes to this football stuff because I’ve got a lot of passion for it. And I don’t feel like everybody knows that about me.”
“They think my bad body language is me just not caring or I’m frustrated. No, it’s just passion for the game,” Nabers added. “I put a lot of effort into it and that can come off to anybody how they want to speak to it as far as that but like I said, it’s not hurting anyone. It’s not hurting the team. We won the game. And it got everybody able to [get] going, we scored a touchdown and everything was going great in the second half. So, I’m not [going to] speak on the bad body language because it hasn’t affected the team at all.”
Giants coach John Harbaugh met with reporters Monday, the day after the win in Philadelphia, which was New York’s first there since 2013.
“So I don’t make too much of it because I’ve just been living in that world for so long and kind of understand how that goes,” Harbaugh said. “As far as body language, body language is interesting. It’s definitely a language, and languages are interesting because they require interpretation sometimes, especially if you don’t speak the language.”
“If you really don’t know the person or you don’t know the dynamic or you don’t know the circumstances or who the person’s talking to, especially if you’re judging through a TV screen, how do you have any idea what the application is and how do you judge it?” Harbaugh continued. “It’s really hard to judge it, make a judgment on it. That’s good, bad, especially to say good or bad. I don’t think that really even makes any sense to me. And then you don’t really know the person, you don’t know the relationship between the people. So I try to stay out of all that and probably good advice for others too.”
Several Giants players told ESPN on Tuesday that they consider Nabers a good teammate. Running back Cam Skattebo, who returned to practice this week from a hamstring injury, was among them.
“When you have that caliber of player that is top-three in the league, you have to understand he wants, he’s demanding it,” Skattebo said.
Harbaugh met with reporters again Tuesday after practice, shortly after Nabers spoke.
“If you think about it, I did mention that to the team. If you won the first game, it’s either you’re a game ahead or you’re even,” Harbaugh explained. “If you lost the first game, you’re either even or a game behind if you win. But this is for all the marbles. It’s a tie right now. This is the tiebreaker. It’s like going to the second half tied, you have a chance to go win the game right now and be one up on these guys for the rest of the season. So, it’s a big game.”
The Giants are 5-2-1 and lead the NFC East. Kickoff Thursday is set for 7:15 p.m. CT at MetLife Stadium, with the game streaming on Prime Video.
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