Malik Nabers Credits Darius Slayton for Helping Him During Rookie Season

New York Giants wide receiver Malik Nabers doesn’t need much assistance to ball out whenever he takes the gridiron on Sundays.
As soon as the LSU product and first-round pick touched ground in East Rutherford this summer, he immediately became a big force in everything the team did on offense.
He slid right in the No. 1 option in head coach Brian Daboll’s huddle and wasted no time helping craft up plays designed to put the football into his hands and make magic happen.
Malik Nabers says that Darius Slayton played a pivotal role in his record breaking rookie season. He even went so far as to create cut-ups for the receivers, detailing how each defensive back would play and their tendencies.#Giants #NFL pic.twitter.com/WbMuCdFbtZ
— The Giants Report (@giantsreport1) January 17, 2025
Nabers endeared himself to the Giants with his gifted skillset and freakish athleticism, which shined in his rookie season. He produced a franchise record-setting 109 receptions for 1,204 yards and seven touchdowns and fell just three catches shy of the record held by fellow first-year tight end Brock Bowers.
With how he performed on and off the field, including being a rare youthful voice in the Gants locker room when things got tough down the stretch of a 10-game losing streak, it felt as if Nabers was a born leader who didn’t need help acclimating to life at the NFL level.
The contrary is true, however, as Nabers wasn’t shy to accept some guidance, at times welcoming physical mentorship from veteran receivers in the Giants locker room, like Darius Slayton, who Nabers revealed played a pivotal role in his early rise to stardom in the Big Apple.
Slayton took the wide-eyed playmaker under his wings through the power of dissecting film and using it to show how Nabers could become more dangerous no matter what opponent he was about to face.
“I would think about Slay, how he always had a film set up with DBs (defensive backs) and just had these cut-ups that he would always give to the receivers before the game,” Nabers said about what stood out the most from working with his veteran teammates during the season.
“How this DB plays, how that DB plays, and he always had individual people going into it, and he’d say they’re already scared of your speed and quickness, so make sure you use that to your advantage.”
As wise as Slayton’s advice was for a player who dominated at the college game but was entering a new level of competition, Nabers took it to heart before he even received it.
He jumped out to a fast start in the first month of his debut campaign, securing two games with 10+ catches for 115+ yards and three touchdowns with two, earning double-digit yardage per grab.
Nabers quickly became one of the most electric deep threats in the entire league. He collected the fourth-highest targets of 20+ yards and turned them into 30.9 yards per catch and 5.9 yards after the catch per reception with his nifty abilities in space and shedding tackles in press coverage.
Almost every week, he was a consistent target for the shifting quarterback position and led the effort to remain a fully functioning offense despite deficiencies in talent and health.
The heroics would reach a turning point in the middle of the season, though, as Nabers started to receive more defensive attention and became frustrated with his team’s struggle to find him the football.
What he didn’t realize was an opportunity to step back and learn more from his mentor, Slayton, who has had his fair share of ups and downs in the Giants' offense's production realm. This was especially true when Nabers entered the fold and stole the spotlight he once held as a rookie in 2019 and the next couple of seasons thereafter.
That is where Slayton, who bounced back with consecutive 700+ yard receiving years in 2022 and 2023 after a dismal 339 yards in 2021, let his younger counterpart in on the reality that winning in the NFL requires adapting to the game plans around you and finding new ways to allow one’s skills to flourish will give one the upper edge.
Too often, Slayton saw in Nabers something he was forced to be for most of his first five years in New York–the player who had to try and move things to happen to make the big plays that were not coming from the rest of the huddle.
His follow-up advice to the young receiver was to shift his mindset regarding attacking the defense and figuring out the opponent’s weaknesses. Still, only when the time is right, and they’ve already discerned his tendencies on tape.
“Once they know about that (speed and quickness), that’s what you mainly attack and use at first, and then you change it up a bit,” Nabers said.
“Because he was watching me, and sometimes, I would try to mix it up too much. He would just be like, ‘Don’t mix it up too much, always stay with your first mindset, and that’s that they got to stop you.’”
The new approach would work wonderfully for Nabers, who finished the season with three games of at least seven catches and three more touchdowns to round out his seven scoring celebrations this fall.
It all culminated with Nabers’ breakout game in Week 17 against the Colts when he found different ways to expose the opposing secondary en route to 171 yards and two touchdowns that powered the Giants to their lone home win to avoid a historic fate in that regard.
There is no doubt that Slayton’s presence in the Giants receiving corps has been a blessing for more than just Nabers. The Auburn man has kept a consistent and rational voice in the locker room to keep the unit afloat amid the disappointing seasons they've had to endure.
Nabers can only hope to serve as that same style of leader moving forward, and the Giants fan base knows he showed glimpses of that in just a short time in the ranks.
That honor might come on stronger next season, depending on how Slayton’s fate unfolds this offseason. The veteran will enter free agency with the chance to earn a more lucrative deal beyond New York for the first time.
In several months, Nabers could be the new version of Darius Slayton to the incoming players at his position in 2025. If so, he will remove everything he’s learned as the highlight of his rookie experience in the NFL.