Washington
Giants’ Malik Nabers, Washington’s Jayden Daniels made $10,000 Rookie of the Year bet
Giants wide receiver Malik Nabers and Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels have a $10,000 bet on which LSU standout is going to win Rookie of the Year in 2024.
Nabers told The Pivot podcast that he and his college teammate made the bet well before draft night, when Daniels went No. 2 overall to Washington and Nabers went No. 6 to New York.
“Going against him is gonna be fun,” Nabers, 20, told The Pivot in Detroit last Thursday after getting picked. “We got a bet going for Rookie of the Year. Whoever loses gotta pay, I think it’s $10,000 cash.”
The two former Tigers stars are now division rivals, so they are guaranteed to face each other twice a year in the NFC East.
Nabers said both he and Daniels will have no problem treating each other as rivals.
“When we walk out that tunnel, me and him — since we [are] on different sides — we know it’s time to talk sh-t now,” Nabers said with a smile. “We done talked sh-t with other people. So it’s time to talk sh-t with each other.”
Daniels is a major reason that Nabers is in this position, though, he said. So that living out their dreams together as opponents will mean the world to them personally.
“Having that guy as a teammate, he’s a great leader, a great person to be around,” Nabers said. “I probably wouldn’t have had the year I had without him — by him pushing me every day at practice, by him waking me up in the morning to go watch film, him having my back through it all. Just having that guy in my corner has been the best.
He said their first jersey swap will be a “great moment.”
“Having that LSU legendary status when you [are] going into the league, seeing your brother across that you played with, ya’ll guys finally accomplished your dreams,” Nabers said. “So having that brother two times a year on a gameday, able to talk sh-t, able to share jersey swaps with him. That jersey’s gonna mean a lot to me and him.”
Not that Nabers will be focused on anything but winning. The young receiver’s confidence and swagger jumped off the screen as he explained his killer mentality to hosts Ryan Clark, Fred Taylor and Channing Crowder.
“This game could have been taken from me early a lot of different times. So when I’m out there on the field, the mentality that I have is, ‘I’m gonna f— you over,’” Nabers said. “When I get that opportunity, I’m gonna do it. Because a person’s gonna do it to me. So if I can do it to you before you do it to me 100 times on the field before you can get that one, I’m gonna keep doing it every time.
“I’m not gonna stop,” Nabers continued. “It is what it is. Because that one time it’s gonna happen to me, it’s gonna be pushed and talked about more than anything. So if I got the ups, I got the ups. That’s just how it is. I’m hoping to have the ups every time.”
Nabers didn’t know he was going to the Giants specifically when the first round of the NFL Draft arrived, but he said “I kept hearing I’m not getting past top 8.”
“So they was telling me anybody after four, you make ’em pay when you play ’em,” he said. “So it was just whoever passes me up after that, it’s war after that.”
That puts the Los Angeles Chargers on the hook as a team Nabers has circled to embarrass whenever he faces them.
It stuck out how much this journey means to Nabers personally, however, when he described the dinner he had with family and friends in Detroit the night before the draft.
“We shared tears in this restaurant,” he said. “Last night I went around the table. And I spoke about [how] all the people that [were] here at the table [were] here for a reason. I shared a story that a lot of them probably thought I forgot or didn’t know. A lot of key moments in my past that — they helped me when I was a child, they helped my mother, when she didn’t have — they helped me when I didn’t have school clothes to go to school.
“So it was just the little things that mattered to me when I was a kid that led to this moment,” he added. “The little things that counted for me rather than the big things. To spend that night with them, they’ve been crying all week, crying all month to hear my name. So I’m just living it up with them.”
And he balances that sentiment with supreme confidence that he takes to the field.
Like how he handles the pressure of being the next great LSU wide receiver.
“I know there’s gonna be a lot on my shoulders for that — but I’m like that,” Nabers said with a huge grin.
Asked how he will handle New York, Nabers said: “I got a nice smile so, I got a nice style so, yeah. I’m ready.”
Could one of New York City’s most iconic parks soon be surrounded by gates?
At a Wednesday night meeting of the local Community Board’s Parks Committee, tensions ran high over whether or not to install locked gates at Washington Square Park.
The historic Washington Square Arch welcomes visitors from near and far to the park, but when the clock strikes midnight, the police and Parks Department put up French barricades, cross-chained together, until 6 a.m.
Some residents, however, said the barricades aren’t aesthetically pleasing.
“Now it’s time to replace the unattractive police barricades with appropriate gates that really represent the history of that park,” landscape architect George Vellonakis said.
Others said the barricades aren’t effective at keeping people out. One resident shared a photo of a person sleeping overnight on a mattress in the park.
Opponents, however, argued gates aren’t the answer to that issue, and some longtime residents said they hoped the park would be open 24/7.
“I think that the barricades have to go. I think they’re really, really ugly,” one person said. “They’re really hard for the Parks Department and the police to handle, and they don’t work.”
“Particularly Millennials and Gen Z will have these changes for the rest of their lives,” another person said. “I enjoy traveling other similar parks in Europe where you can walk at all hours of the night.”
Back in 2005, the Parks Department considered installing gates but canceled the plan after fierce opposition from the community. A Community Board member said the idea to install gates resurfaced during COVID when overnight gatherings in the park got out of hand.
“We are not anti-gate. We do believe that they should find more effective ways to support the NYPD,” Washington Square Association President Erica Sumner said.
The committee voted on a resolution to formally ask the Parks Department for its recommendations.
Kent, 28, joins the Nationals after he was claimed off waivers from the Minnesota Twins on
Protester scales Washington DC bridge, stays for days
A demonstrator protesting the war in Iran and the use of artificial intelligence climbed Frederick Douglass Bridge, and stayed for days.
Despite saying he would “soon” come down, a protester has remained on top of the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in Washington, DC since May 1, impacting traffic and extending a dayslong standoff with police.
Guido Reichstadter climbed the 168-foot bridge Friday, then draped a black banner and set up a tent while making the bridge his home for the past four days.
Here’s what to know about Reichstadter’s protest and how it is affecting locals in the nation’s capital.
Why is there a man on top of the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge?
After Reichstadter climbed the bridge Friday, he identified himself as a protester, writing on X that he was “calling on the people of the United States to bring an immediate end to the Trump regime’s illegal war on Iran and the removal of the regime power through mass nonviolent direct action and non-cooperation.”
He has posted on X throughout his protest, reminding his followers of his cause as he thwarts attempts from the DC police to bring him down.
“The Trump regime occupying the office of the US executive is prosecuting a criminal war of aggression against the nation of Iran, enabled by the refusal of Congress to assert its constitutional power, and by the continued submission of the majority of the US population to this intolerable state of affairs without effective civil resistance,” he wrote on X, saying it’s the public’s responsibility to nonviolently put an end to Trump’s presidency.
Reichstadter said May 4 he hasn’t eaten for days, but previously told NewsNation he went on a 30-day hunger strike while protesting AI outside the Anthropic headquarters.
He has run out of water, however.
“I’ve got the stamina to stay up here a bit longer,” he told WTOP Monday.
What impact is the protest having in Washington, DC?
Reichstadter’s protest has caused lanes to shut down on the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge, but lanes had reopened for traffic late Monday morning.
Tuesday morning, all lanes were open for traffic, but the pedestrian walkway was closed, according to the Metropolitan Area Transportation Operations Coordination (MATOC) Program.
If he stays on top of the bridge into Tuesday night, it’s unclear how his protest could impact people traveling nearby to the Washington Nationals game.
“My efforts here have had impacts on the local community and its people, and it is my desire not to harm but to work in communication, to lift up and to contribute what strength I can to the ongoing struggle for rights and freedom which this community has been engaged in for years,” Reichstadter said Sunday.
Police said Monday that their negotiators will remain on the scene.
Mike Stunson is the DC Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network.
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