Giants second-round pick Tyler Nubin shows leadership skills in rookie minicamp
Tyler Nubin, 31 of the Giants during the New York Giants rookie mini camp at the Meadowlands Quest practice facility in East Rutherford, NJ, Friday, May 10, 2024 Credit: Ed Murray
There wasn’t much of an opportunity at this weekend’s rookie minicamp for the Giants’ draft picks to demonstrate why they were selected in the first place. They took part in a few drills, which allowed for the rare flash of talent in the form of a dazzling catch or burst of speed, but they never faced anything close to live competition, which was reserved for tryouts at the event. This was more about showing them how the Giants do things, not them showing the Giants what they could do.
But there still were opportunities for at least one of them to demonstrate what might be his greatest and most glaring asset.
Second-round pick Tyler Nubin already was settling into his future role as a leader on defense. Having spent the past two weeks since his selection studying the playbook and going through daily Zoom meetings with his position coaches — and being stiff-armed by the organization for wanting to report to New Jersey right away, only to be told he had to wait like everyone else — by the time the safety and his fellow rookies stepped onto the field Friday, it didn’t really feel like Nubin’s NFL debut.
Not to him.
Not to anyone else.
“He’s good,” cornerback and third-round pick Dru Phillips said of his immediate impressions of Nubin’s leadership. “He’s vocal. I know I took my time in the playbook, but you hear him a lot of times in the back end and he’s yelling it. Sometimes you almost can’t hear yourself calling out the plays. I can tell he’s going to be a great player because of his knowledge and how he communicates on the field.”
That’s what the Giants wanted.
General manager Joe Schoen called Nubin a “culture-changer at the University of Minnesota” when he drafted him last month. “He’s going to bring that type of mentality here,” Schoen added, calling his leadership, character, smarts and communication “elite.”
Day One didn’t dissuade him from that assessment. It became very clear very quickly that if anyone on the field had a question about where to be or what to do — and in a rookie camp, those doubts are chaotically common — their eyes and ears turned straight to Nubin. He had the answers.
“Right now, I’m just trying to learn as much as possible, be as vocal as I can, try to put myself and everybody else in positions to succeed,” Nubin said. “Being able to learn and be a sponge and soak up as much as possible and be able to give that to other guys, that’s my main goal right now.”
The Giants will need a lot of that, not just this weekend but as they assemble their full roster through the spring and summer. They have a new defensive coordinator, Shane Bowen, who arrived with a new scheme, so even the veterans must start from scratch. They’ve lost a few of their on-field leaders: Xavier McKinney left during free agency and Adoree’ Jackson is unsigned and unlikely to return.
Throw in the midseason trade of Leonard Williams to Seattle and the Giants have said goodbye to two captains and three starters on their defense. Perhaps it is no coincidence that one of the picks the Giants acquired from the Seahawks in the Williams trade was used to select Nubin.
Asked to describe himself for Giants fans, Nubin said: “You’re getting a dog, man. You are getting somebody that’s not going to stop until . . . honestly just never going to stop, really. I love the game too much. I feel like whatever I have to do to be successful on the field, I’m going to do and sacrifice for this team, this city, and I’m going to love doing it.”
Nubin has a chance to not only step into a starting role in the secondary but take a very early leadership role. There aren’t only starting jobs up for grabs on this unit, there are captaincies too, formal or otherwise.
Can a rookie have that kind of impact? Can Nubin?
Giants coach Brian Daboll wasn’t going to pressure Nubin with that yoke on his first day as a pro, insisting that the 22-year-old still has a lot to learn about the game and his surroundings at this level. But he did give an early, optimistic answer to those questions.
“The signs lead to yes,” he said.
They wanted a culture-changer. Now they have to let him go do it.
Nubin wasn’t able to make the ballhawking interceptions or jarring hits that come along with it, the skills that have the team excited for the production he can provide and the way they can deploy him on the field.
“Definitely a little bit tough to hold back,” Nubin said of avoiding those kinds of plays that were not yet part of the script. “It’s a long season. There will be time for that.”
Nubin, though, was at full stride in terms of the other stuff the Giants want from him, the intangibles that attracted them to him. And he is undaunted by the task of maintaining that pace once the tryouts and camp bodies disperse and the veterans return in the coming weeks.
“I think everybody can be a leader,” he said. “Everybody can be a leader on a football team no matter who you are.”
Hmmm. That may or may not be true, and there are plenty of examples to prove otherwise.
But in his very first days with the Giants, Nubin certainly has shown he has a special knack for it.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
