Malik Nabers is going to have to change out of red before he gets the green light from the Giants.
Practicing in team periods for the second straight day — a first in his recovery from a torn ACL — during training camp, Nabers made a leaping catch Tuesday as two defensive backs pulled up and heeded the team message not to bump the star receiver.
Nabers is wearing a noncontact red jersey. He won’t jump right from that to playing Week 1 against the Cowboys.
“He won’t go through the rest of the summer in a red jersey,” head coach John Harbaugh said. “He’s going to have to get bumped around and hit and fronted up. You just have to feel that and know how to deal with it to protect yourself.”
Harbaugh said, “there are certain formulas that we use that kind of tell us what the risk factors are in practice” to determine Nabers’ workload. He had more team reps Tuesday than Monday, and “he handled it well.”
“I’ve always been hopeful that he would play in [Week 1 of] the regular season,” Harbaugh said. “Still don’t know for sure, so we just have to see where we go day to day.”
The Giants cut WR JuJu Smith-Schuster to make room for RB Najee Harris.
Smith-Schuster suffered a knee injury and never gained traction in a deep position battle, though he did make a nice back-of-the-end-zone toe-tapping touchdown catch when healthy.
Harbaugh and Dolphins head coach Jeff Hafley have discussed the rules of engagement heading into Thursday’s joint practice. Those settings tend to get chippy.
“We’ll emphasize protecting each other’s quarterbacks even more because as soon as somebody gets close — and the other team’s going to talk about getting close — we can’t have that,” Harbaugh said. “Nobody can get close to the quarterback. That’s going to be a major point of emphasis.
“And we’re going to stay off the ground, and we’re going to be looking for no blindside shots of any kind. It’s a front-up tackle. It won’t be side shots and things like that. That’s the goal. So, we want to protect them as much as we protect our own players, and we want them to protect our players as much as they would protect their own players.”
