RIP NFL: The Giants Are Unretiring Number 1 So Malik Nabers Can Wear It While Dominating The League
NY Post- Malik Nabers is already No. 1 in the hearts and minds of many Giants fans. And now, The Post has learned, he will be the first Giant to wear No. 1 since the late Hall of Fame Giant end-defensive end Ray Flaherty became the first professional football player to have his number retired in 1935.
Nabers, the Giants’ No. 1 pick, wore 8 at LSU and switched to 9 in training camp. Before John Mara received the green light from the Flaherty family, made aware of all the retired single numbers (1, Tuffy Leemans’ 4 and Mel Hein’s 7) in Giants history, Nabers began exploring other options — Drew Lock’s No. 2 and Jamie Gillian’s No. 6 — but to no avail. “Only because it was gonna be pretty hard at trying to get the jersey unretired,” Nabers told the Post. But if anything could be done, Nabers told Mara: “No. 1 would be fine.”
Ray Flaherty Jr. officially on Wednesday gave his blessings to Mara and the franchise, which intends to return his father’s No. 1 to retirement again once Nabers’ Giants career ends. “Re-retired if you will,” Flaherty Jr. told the Post. “
After thinking about it a little bit, my feeling was we would allow that only if the Flaherty family was OK with it,” Mara told the Post. “I think it’s very gracious on their part, and Malik understands that that comes with a certain responsibility and how he needs to conduct himself and represent the organization and the Flaherty family. He’s been great about it, he immediately called them to thank them.”
Well it's official. Malik Nabers is going to be a superduperstar. I was pretty much sold on that being the case after watching his highlights at LSU, reading the reports of him dominating at Giants camp, and the fact he has carried himself himself like an Alpha WR1 since the NFL Draft.
Advertisement
However after hearing that the Giants not only unretired the number 1 but also unretired it after it being the first retired number in NFL history has pretty much put Nabers on the cusp of Canton before his first regular season snap.
Advanced sports science has proven that putting the number 1 on a player instantly makes their Speed rating go through the roof. So putting the number 1 on a weapon like Malik Nabers is like loading a nuclear warhead on an F-35. To be honest, I'm not sure if it's even possible to load a nuke on an F-35 or if an F-35 is the gold standard for badass fighter jets. But I know PFT knows the answers to both those questions and he definitely won't like them because the Commies and the rest of the NFL is about to have their hands full with a monster that was doing shit like this with a pedestrian number like 9.
I'd say pray for the NFL, but that would've been the case if Nabers kept 9 or chose to wear A+ receiver numbers like 80, 84, or 88. But it's too late for praying now that he is wearing number 1. Now we pay our respects for whatever this young man is about to do to the defenses of the National Football League.