Malachi Fields followed a strong Giants camp with a touchdown in his preseason debut
The Giants traded three picks to move up for the Notre Dame receiver, who caught all three targets in his first NFL game.
Malachi Fields caught all three passes thrown to him for 34 yards in his first NFL game Saturday, including a 15-yard touchdown that gave the Giants their only lead against the Vikings.
The touchdown came on a play that broke down. Jaxson Dart was pressured on the Giants' second series, left the pocket and threw to the left side of the end zone, where Fields went up over linebacker Ivan Pace Jr. and got both feet down. Fields stayed on the field with the second unit after the starters came out.
Asked about the play afterward, John Harbaugh said: “Most red zone touchdown passes are not on time. Most red zone touchdown passes are extended and/or plus scrambles.”
Malachi Fields in Giants training camp
The debut followed two and a half weeks of camp in which Fields moved up the receiver group. Jeremy Fowler of ESPN reported in late July that the Giants were “highly impressed” with him, and by Aug. 11 Dan Duggan of The Athletic ranked him third among the receivers behind Darius Slayton and Malik Nabers. Some of Fields' first-team work came while Slayton and JuJu Smith-Schuster were out with injuries.
Two plays at The Greenbrier stood out. On Aug. 3, in a 40-minute downpour, Fields ran a fly route past cornerback Paulson Adebo for a gain of about 50 yards. On Aug. 8, the last practice in West Virginia, he caught two red-zone touchdowns from Dart in one-on-one drills. In between, he was held out of team drills on Aug. 4 and 5 with an injury the team did not describe; Harbaugh called it minor on Aug. 5.
Receivers coach Chad Hall told Ryan Dunleavy of the New York Post that “the playbook comes easy to him so we can really focus on what happens after the snap rather than before,” and that the biggest word for Fields since he arrived is growth. Safety Jason Pinnock, asked about him Aug. 12, described a catch over the middle from OTAs and said Fields “was just levitating.”
Fields told Dunleavy: “The big plays are fun, but there's more that goes into it — the blocking that you don't see, the third-and-4 conversions, all that stuff.”
Malachi Fields' college career at Virginia and Notre Dame
Fields grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia, played quarterback at Monticello High School and was recruited as a receiver by Virginia, Liberty, VMI and William & Mary. He chose Virginia and did little in his first two seasons there — 11 catches as a freshman in 2021, then a broken foot in spring practice that cost him the first nine games of 2022. He returned for one game, against Pittsburgh.
He became a productive starter over the next two seasons, catching 58 passes for 811 yards and five touchdowns in 2023 and 55 for 808 with five more scores in 2024, when he made third-team All-ACC and was one of five team captains. Both years he was used primarily as an outside receiver.
He transferred to Notre Dame in December 2024 for his final season and caught 36 passes for 630 yards and five touchdowns in 12 starts. His 17.5 yards per catch led the team, and his average depth of target of 16.4 yards ranked 25th in the country, per RosterWatch.
Why Malachi Fields lasted until the third round
Fields ran 4.61 in the 40-yard dash at the combine, slower than about 85 percent of receivers who have run there, per NFLDraftBuzz. Evaluators had already questioned from his tape whether he could get open consistently against NFL cornerbacks, particularly in press coverage, and the time reinforced that concern.
Lance Zierlein's NFL.com draft profile graded Fields 6.27 — the league site's range for a player who “will eventually be average starter” — and listed the concerns plainly: “Delayed release creates early traffic against press,” “Speed is more build-up than run-by,” “Unable to shake clingy coverage with route running,” and “Below-average scrambling to uncover on extended plays.” Zierlein wrote that Fields “can be a slow starter versus press and lives on contested targets” but “consistently tilts 50/50 balls in his direction outside the numbers,” and projected him as “a productive WR2 in time.”
Sy'56, Big Blue Interactive's draft analyst, was more positive about how Fields handled press — he called Fields “the aggressor when press coverage comes into play” and credited him with long speed and detail-oriented footwork — but raised the same concern, writing that Fields “does not move with a ton of quick twitch and could have issues getting open.” He called Fields a Day 3 pick with “a safe number two or three receiver-projection.”
Harbaugh addressed the 40 time directly at the post-draft news conference. “I heard what some of the commentary said, the 40 time is a concern for people, but when you do the miles per hour, which we get the tracking now, that's fast,” he said. “He tracks a lot faster. He's the equivalent of a mid-4.4 type 40 time. He's running over 21 miles an hour consistently in games.”
The rest of his testing and his hands drew no such concern. He jumped 38 inches vertically and 10 feet, 4 inches in the broad jump, both above average for the position. The same NFL.com profile credited him with “sudden, sticky hands” and a “dominant win rate on contested catches during career.” Bob Sturm's April profile counted six drops in 2023, two in 2024 and one in 2025, and Pro Football Network listed his 2025 drop rate at 1.6 percent.
The Giants traded No. 105, No. 145 and a 2027 fourth-round pick to Cleveland to move up 31 spots and take him at No. 74. “He's a guy we felt — honestly we felt like he had for us maybe a second round value,” Harbaugh said at his post-draft news conference. Patricia Traina of SI wrote that the Giants “were willing to move heaven and earth” to get back into the round, and that Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald reported the Dolphins, picking 75th, wanted Fields.
Malachi Fields and the Plaxico Burress comparison
The comparison to Burress was made by Jeremy Fowler of ESPN in late July, and earlier by Matthew Schmidt of Roundtable. Both are big receivers who ran nearly identical 40s — Fields 4.61, Burress 4.59 at the 2000 combine — and both won contested catches near the goal line.
The measurements diverge from there. Burress was 6-5⅜ and 231 pounds with arms longer than 94 percent of the receivers PlayerProfiler tracks; Fields is 6-4½ and 218 with arms in the 63rd percentile. Fields tested as the better jumper, with a vertical five inches higher and a broad jump nine inches longer. Burress also had a far more productive college career, with back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons at Michigan State and 131 catches for 2,155 yards and 20 touchdowns by the school's bowl-inclusive count. Fields' best season was 811 yards.
The comparison from inside the Giants' building is different. Adebo, asked about Fields on Aug. 4, said he “reminds me of kind of those old school, traditional, like Terrell Owens type that can go up and get the ball but also has the speed to kind of break away from you.” Fields' 40 time does not support the second half of that description.
What Malachi Fields still has to prove
Saturday's touchdown showed the traits nobody questioned before the draft: Fields was covered, the play broke down and he won at the catch point.
The trait scouts did question has not been tested in public just yet. The Giants play at Miami on Aug. 22, against the team that reportedly wanted him at No. 75.