No school. No sports. No combine prep. For the first time since he was 11, Malik Nabers has a break.

And the wide receiver has plenty to reflect on in the downtime between now and the start of spring football.

"It never really hit me," Nabers said during a sit-down conversation with Giants.com. "I'm sure it will later on when I'm thinking about it. I'm still taking it all in."

Nabers, whose rookie year coincided with the Giants' 100^th season, broke the franchise record with 109 catches, two more than the previous mark held by Steve Smith since 2009. At the same time, he was in a race with Raiders tight end Brock Bowers to rewrite the NFL rookie record of 105, which was held by the Rams' Puka Nacua and stood for just one season.

Bowers ultimately finished on top with three more than his old lifting buddy.

Nabers, the eventual sixth overall pick who capped his college career as the all-time leader in receptions and receiving yards in his backyard at LSU, struck up a friendship late last February at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis with Bowers, the 13^th overall pick and Georgia product who grew up in California wine country. As football players tend to do, they got to talking – and competing – in the weight room, where the 6-foot, 200-pound wide receiver wanted to keep up with the tight ends.

"I'm lifting with Cade Stover (fourth-round pick by Houston) and I'm lifting with Brock, and I don't want to keep taking the weight off," Nabers recalled. "They're like, 'You can lift this?' I'm like, 'Yeah.' They're like, 'No way.' And I was lifting with them. They're like, 'All right, cool.' That friendship became a little bond through the weight room. We'd always see each other and have laughs. Brock is a funny dude. Him and Cade together are funny dudes. It's great making friends around the league. Those tight ends, though, they like to lift a lot. I was keeping up though."

Defensive backs couldn't say the same thing.

Nabers paced opposing defenses with 12 catches for 235 yards and three touchdowns in the final two weeks to finish with the Giants' first 1,000-yard receiving season since Odell Beckham Jr. in 2018.

While Beckham did it in a No. 13 jersey, Nabers became the first Giants player to wear No. 1 since 1935. The number was taken out of circulation after Ray Flaherty retired following that season. It was the first retired jersey number in professional football.

Nabers received special permission from Flaherty's family just days before the season began.

"I knew I had to do something," Nabers said. "When you're going to retire a jersey and give it to another person, that person has got to do something with the jersey. I just think I continued to play how I know I can play. I always just wanted to play to my standard. I guess it looked good this year."

It certainly did, especially considering Nabers had to catch passes from four different quarterbacks throughout the course of 15 games.

"It started in training camp, just always being open, always making contested plays, always being that guy that the quarterback can rely on to be open," Nabers said. "Or [they could say] if I throw his way, I'm sure he's going to come down with it more times than he's not. They knew they could trust me when they pass me the ball. I feel like every quarterback was just comfortable throwing me the ball. I feel like I was always open for them to get me the ball, and they trusted me to make the play when they throw me the ball."

Nabers added: "In Week 1 I was like running around with my head cut off, trying to understand the plays, trying to remember what routes I have. As I got moving on with the season, I got more and more comfortable. Before I even heard the quarterback finish the long sentence of the play, I was able to just hurry up and get lined up, read the defense a little faster, knew how I had to run the route on the defender that was playing over me or just zones I had to sit in. Just going on through the season I felt like I got more and more comfortable, and I was able to play to my standard for sure."

Nabers couldn't have done it by himself.

"I had a lot of great help," he said. "I had Darius [Slayton], Wan'Dale [Robinson] helping me, [wide receivers] coach [Mike] Groh also helping me, just taking individual walk-throughs and helping me understand the playbook, understand what I have to do, understand the leverage of corners, DBs, understand where my triangle is at just looking at the defense. I had a lot of good help going, so it made it a lot easier."

Slayton would give film cutups of defensive backs to receivers before games. He would tell Nabers that they were already scared of his speed and quickness, so he had to make sure to use that to his advantage.

"He was just watching me and sometimes I would mix it up too much," Nabers said of Slayton. "He was like, 'Don't mix it up too much. Always stay with your first mindset: they've got to stop you.'"

Now, opposing coaches will spend parts of this offseason trying to think of ways to do that in Year 2.

In the meantime, Nabers will take time to get his mind and body right before doing it all again.

"I've never had a break since I was like 11," he said. "I've got to find a way to always live your life, for sure, as your main focus. Take some time to put football to rest. Remember that you're actually a real person. You have real problems. You've got to let your body rest … to go back into the season strong . Work out so next year is not a fall or down year; you're still progressing. Just try to find that balance."