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Malik Nabers left nothing open to interpretation.
Addressing the media for the first time since he fired back at Fox analyst Greg Olsen for critiquing his body language (along with play-by-play voice Joe Davis) during Sunday’s broadcast of the Giants’ win against the Eagles, Nabers let it be known that he isn’t going to conform to some ideal of how an NFL player should act during a game.
“I just feel like the narrative on me is always all the bad body language things that people have been saying,” Nabers said. “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.’ 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 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.”
Olsen never specifically called Nabers a bad teammate. But the broadcast implied that he wasn’t happy for teammate Isaiah Likely when he caught the go-ahead touchdown.
Nabers, who never hides his desire for more targets, spiked his helmet off the bench when the Giants were held to two field goals and four three-and-outs in the first half.
His streak of four straight 100-yard games was snapped.
“One thing about it is that I’m an ultimate competitor whether it’s going [well] or if it’s going bad,” Nabers said. “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.”
Nabers showed a little vulnerability as he alluded to the year of rehab that went into returning from a torn ACL.
“I feel like I hold everybody to that standard to play just like that — play mean,” Nabers said. “It was bye week and we came off flat, we came off slow. And I was just trying to set an example of like, ‘Let’s get everybody going,’ and my way of getting everybody going is 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. 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.”
Nabers said that he would welcome “a simple conversation” with Olsen, who played 14 years in the NFL, if the former tight end wants to reach out.
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“I’ve never been on a team where anyone has called me a bad teammate that I know of,” Nabers said. “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 OK. But just don’t tell the world who I am if you don’t know who I am.”
