Malik Nabers will wear No. 1 with the New York Giants, despite that jersey number being retired longer than other in the NFL.
The Giants announced Wednesday that Nabers had received permission from the family of Hall of Famer Ray Flaherty to don a number that hadn’t been in use since 1935. The number was the first to be retired by any team in professional football history.
Nabers had previously worn No. 9 during training camp and preseason, but that number is also used by veteran kicker Graham Gano.
Usually, when you see a player pressing for a number that isn’t available, it’s usually a case of the player having worn it his entire lift or having a special connection to the number. That isn’t the case with Nabers, though, as he wore No. 8 in his college career at LSU and No. 13 while in high school.
Neither of those numbers were available for Nabers on the Giants though, as his quarterback Daniel Jones sports No. 8 while fellow wideout Jalin Hayatt has No. 13. In fact, the only numbers under 20 not already in use or retired by the Giants are No. 12 and No. 18.
With numbers in the 80s out of vogue for wide receivers, that apparently wouldn’t do.
Nabers told the Giants’ website that after seeing his limited options, he didn’t want to pay a teammate for a number. So he approached Giants owner John Mara about a retired number:
“Everybody else’s number was really taken,” Nabers said. “I didn’t feel like buying somebody else’s number. I looked into retired jerseys and number one stood out. So, I asked John Mara about it. He was like, ‘We could give it a shot.’ So, we gave it a shot.”
Mara reportedly pushed back on the idea initially before deciding to approach the Flaherty family.
According to Flaherty’s son, Ray Flaherty Jr., it took a while to get the entire family on board:
“There were a few things,” Flaherty said. “Probably one of the most important is I kind of polled my family. I’ve got two sons and a daughter. And, of course, that’s their grandfather. Initially, my daughter wasn’t that excited about it. And it was she that came around. Eventually she said, ‘It might be lucky for him. That number one might be a good number for him.’ She acquiesced. We thought that would be the way to go.”
Flaherty played for the Giants from 1929 to 1935, winning the NFL championship game in 1934. Under Giants lore, it was his idea for the team to wear sneakers after a night of freezing rain, with the traction helping them win what would become known as the “Sneakers Game.”
He died in 1994, at the age of 90.
This isn’t the first time the Giants have unretired a number, as Hall of Famer Y.A. Tittle was allowed to wear No. 14 after being traded to New York despite it having been retired for Ward Cuff in 1946.
The Giants selected Nabers out of LSU with the sixth overall pick of the 2024 NFL Draft, and have only seen the hype around him grow in the months since.
Alongside Marvin Harrison Jr. and Rome Odunze, Nabers was considered one of the best wide receiver prospects to enter the draft in recent history. He was a unanimous All-American with 1,569 receiving yards and 14 touchdowns in his junior year, then impressed at the scouting combine with 4.35-second speed in the 40-yard dash.
Giants writers effusively praised Nabers’ performance in training camp, and he looked like a rising star in preseason as well.
With Jones still under center for the Giants, it’s hard to see the team taking the leap forward on offense they need to become a serious contender, but no one can’t say they didn’t give the passer a weapon.
