Giants' Malik Nabers shares strong reaction to Shedeur Sanders' draft slide

Second-year New York Giants wide receiver Malik Nabers indicated this past winter that he would've happily welcomed sharing a locker room with Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders. 

Despite that, the Giants ultimately traded back into the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft to select Ole Miss' Jaxson Dart long before Sanders fell to the fifth round of the player-selection process. 

During the latest edition of the "7PM in Brooklyn with Carmelo Anthony" podcast, Nabers offered a strong reaction to what's become one of the most-discussed draft slides in NFL history.

"You don't do something like that to somebody like that," Nabers said about teams passing on Sanders a handful of times, as shared by Eva Geitheim of Sports Illustrated. "You can't knock his talent. I heard a lot of things about, he takes unnecessary sacks. He had a bad O-line. He threw 70% with a bad O-line. Talk about his escaping the pocket. You can pull up plenty of clips of him escaping 3-4 tackles and throwing it down the field. Most of his receivers had 7-8 touchdowns. He played with Travis Hunter. He won the Biletnikoff [Award.] Some things you just can't knock."

Among other things, Nabers was referencing how Sanders took an FBS-high 94 sacks over his final two college seasons. While it became clear leading up to the draft that some scouts and analysts viewed Sanders as little more than a backup at the highest level, many fans assumed the polarizing prospect would go off the board in the first round. 

It's now known that how Sanders reportedly handled the predraft process caused him to plummet down the draft order until the Cleveland Browns traded up to select him with pick No. 144. Specifically, one of Sanders' visits with Giants head coach Brian Daboll allegedly "did not go particularly well" and may have resulted in general manager Joe Schoen shifting "his preference" from Sanders to Dart. 

For what it's worth, Nabers understands what it feels like to have to answer questions about supposed character concerns both before and after a draft. The Giants took Nabers with the sixth overall pick in the spring of 2024. 

"We’re here for one thing and that’s to play football," Nabers added during his comments about Sanders, per Jenna Lemoncelli of the New York Post. "Everybody’s got different personalities...This boy was the talk of the top two QBs in his class. There’s no way in hell he goes fifth round."

Thirty-two teams clearly disagreed with Nabers' assessments, and it's now on Sanders to prove all those clubs wrong from springtime workouts through the upcoming season. As for Nabers, he'll spend this fall catching passes thrown by veteran Russell Wilson if the Giants stick to their plan for developing Dart.