Giants Coach John Harbaugh Unsure When Malik Nabers Will Be Ready

East Rutherford, N.J. - New York Giants wide receiver Malik Nabers continues to work on rehabbing his surgically repaired right knee with an eye toward returning in Week 1 of the season, but head coach John Harbaugh didn’t sound so certain that would be the case.

“Yeah, it's in the middle of it,” Harbaugh said Thursday after the team completed its third OTA practice. “It’s such a hard thing. It's an ACL and whatever else he had in that knee. Not a simple knee, you know.

“So he's in the slog of it, the grind of it, I would say. He's fighting through it. You know, he's here every day, working hard at it.”

There has been growing concern that NAbers will not only land on the PUP list to start training camp, but also conceivably miss all of camp and the first few weeks of the season.

If Nabers isn’t ready for the start of the season, they could put him on the PUP list to give him extra time, thereby buying at least another month until he is hopefully able to begin ramping up again.

“Just impossible to predict,” Harbaugh said of the timeline. “I mean, the goal is to start the season and get out there sometime in training camp. That would be the goal.

“We'll see what happens. If he's out there, great. If he's not out there, great. We'll be ready to go either way.”

Nabers underwent a “clean-up” procedure on his right knee weeks ago to remove scar tissue. While that procedure isn’t thought to be a setback to his recovery timeline, it certainly wasn’t what the Giants or the receiver likely wanted to hear, given how far he had come in his rehab.

Harbaugh said that Nabers is handling the situation as well as can be given the circumstances.

“I can't speak for him. I think it's probably the first time he's been hurt like this,” the head coach said. “My experience with guys is that the first time they have a serious injury, it's tough. It's tough because it's new for him. It's a tough process.

“So our job is to stay close to him and stay with him, and his job is to trust and work hard. He's doing his job, and the trainers and docs are doing their job, and he will be back.”

But when that happens, right now is anyone’s guess.

“I know he's fighting like crazy to do his best to be out there. He's with the guys every day,” Harbaugh said.

Nabers was among those Giants players not spotted during the team’s third OTA, which was open to the media. It’s believed that he was inside the building receiving treatment and working on his rehab.

Andrew Thomas’s Workload Being Managed

May 21, 2026; East Rutherford, NJ, USA; New York Giants offensive tackle Andrew Thomas (78) speaks at a press conference during organized team activities at Quest Diagnostics Training Center. | John Jones-Imagn Images

Giants left tackle Andrew Thomas was also among those who did not partake in the practice on Thursday.

Harbaugh said Thomas, who did practice in the first two OTAs, is managing foot and shoulder issues.

“We're working him back,” Harbaugh said. “He has a shoulder he's coming back from. Not too much of the real physical contact stuff. He's got a foot he's working through. So those things are things we'll manage.”

“Yeah, they have a nice ramp-up planned for me,” Thomas said. “Just a precautionary thing. Obviously, what we care about is September, being ready, so I've been trusting that.”

Not that it’s been easy for the veteran left tackle.

“It's definitely tough sometimes because I want to push it and I want to get better, but I'm trying to trust the process to make sure I'm ready to go when it counts,” he said.

Thomas said the shoulder has been bothering him for a while and that he didn't need surgery.

The foot issue, which is related to the Lisfranc injury he suffered a couple of years ago, is just maintenance.

“It's just part of the process,” Harbaugh said. “It's not like an injury-injury. He doesn't need every rep anyway. We're just managing it.”

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