Could free agent wide receiver Hakeem Nicks land with his former team, the New York Giants? They are in desperate need of warm bodies at receiver after Odell Beckham Jr., Brandon Marshall, Sterling Shepherd, and Dwayne Harris all suffered foot/ankle injuries of varying seriousness in the same game last weekend.
Beckham, Harris, and Marshall will miss the rest of the season with a broken ankle, broken foot, and unspecified ankle injury, respectively. Shepherd will miss at least a few weeks with an ankle injury of his own. And at 0-5, the Giants are one of three winless teams remaining in the NFL. Things are not going well.
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Of the group of winless teams, they are by far the most surprising. Cleveland and San Francisco are also 0-5, but nobody predicted the Browns or 49ers to win their divisions, as they did with the Giants. In fact, ten of 15 NFL.com experts picked the Giants to win the NFC East, and four picked the Giants to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl. Marc Sessler picked them to win it all.
So Ben McAdoo and the Giants need help — fast.
Enter (potentially): Hakeem Nicks.
The Giants drafted Nicks in the first round of the 2009 NFL Draft, and he looked like a budding star for the first three of his five seasons in New York. He caught 209 passes for 3,088 yards and 24 touchdowns in his first three years with the Giants, and was fantastic in their 2011 Super Bowl run. He caught 28 balls for 444 yards and 4 TDs in four playoff games.
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Then things went south. Nicks broke his foot during offseason training activities before the 2012 season, and was supposed to be out of commission for 8-12 weeks. He missed the first five weeks of the season and wasn't nearly as effective when he returned.
Nicks' catch rate dropped from the high 50s/low 60s to 53 percent in 2012, and he had his fewest yards and TDs as a Giant. A knee injury in Week 2 of the 2013 season required arthroscopic surgery and further limited his effectiveness.
Nicks left the Giants after the 2013 season for a one-year deal with the Indianapolis Colts, presumably in hopes of proving himself and landing a long-term contract. It didn't work.
Nicks was disappointing, to say the least, in his first year in Indianapolis, catching just 38 passes for 405 yards and 4 TDs in 16 games. After one more injury-diminished season in Indy, he was released, and got another tryout with the Giants in 2015.
Former Giants coach Tom Coughlin and Nicks did not have a great relationship at the time he left — Coughlin was critical of Nicks for his perceived lack of effort. Nicks has been a free agent since.
But this is a new, and desperate, regime. Nicks is only 29 years old, and the Giants are in dire straights. It would be a surprise to see him sign with his former team but it wouldn't be surprised to see him get a look.