Giants legend Leonard Marshall on the Hall of Fame, Malik Nabers and how to achieve NFL greatness

Giants legend Leonard Marshall starred at LSU in college, and he believes the Giants’ newest Tiger, first-round wide receiver Malik Nabers, is going to be a gamechanger for Big Blue.

“Malik’s story is very unique to mine,” Marshall, 62, said on the “Talkin’ Ball with Pat Leonard” podcast. “Malik and I grew up pretty much in the same area [in Louisiana]. I believe his mother went to the same high school that I went to. His family lived in Franklin, La., for a short stint, and then his mom moved on to Lafayette. But the kid is a beast.”

“In every facet of the game he brings a dynamic burst of energy,” Marshall added. “He’s an excellent wide receiver. He’s extremely quick. He has quick feet. His route running style reminds me a lot of a big receiver I knew from back in the day, and yet that guy never got his just due, and that was Mike Quick of the Philadelphia Eagles.”

Quick, 65, a two-time All-Pro and five-time Pro Bowler, is in the Eagles franchise’s Hall of Fame after racking up 6,464 receiving yards and 61 touchdowns in 101 games from 1982-90.

Marshall said Nabers’ style specifically reminds him of Quick in how he comes out of his breaks and runs some of the most difficult routes in the game so methodically and effortlessly.

“You can’t tell when [Nabers] is gonna come out of his break, when he’s running a [choice] route, when he’s running a go route, when he’s running a stutter go or when he’s running a fade,” Marshall said. “You can never tell when he’s gonna do it. And it’s so smooth and effortless it almost looks like it’s natural to him. But you’ve got to work at that.”

“He was a pleasure and fun to watch in an LSU uniform,” the Giants great added. “It’s gonna be even more fun to watch him as a New York Giant because now he’s in my backyard.”

The reason the Giants can celebrate the franchise’s 100th season so proudly this fall, of course, is because of all-time greats like Marshall who set the standard and paved the way.

The former standout defensive end has almost all of the accolades a pro football player could ask for.

He is a two-time Super Bowl champion. He was twice the NFL’s Defensive Lineman of the Year. He is in the Giants’ Ring of Honor, with his 79.5 sacks as a Giant the third-most in team history.

And he is one of only 15 players in NFL history to have three or more sacks in the Super Bowl in their careers.

There’s just one remaining that would mean the most of all: a knock on the door from the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, where his teammates Lawrence Taylor and Harry Carson are already enshrined.

Marshall fondly refers to the trio of himself, Taylor and Carson as “the three-legged stool.”

“The culmination of it would be to one day see my big butt in Canton and finish off that three-legged stool,” Marshall said with a smile. “I refer to our relationship as a three-legged stool because the three of us kind of depended on each other on the right side of our defense to really make an impact in games.”

“It would mean a lot. It’d be the crowning moment of my career,” he said, getting emotional. “It’s too bad my dad is not alive to see it. But it would mean the world to me. It would be fitting to what I did as a player and what I contributed to the game of football. It would mean the world.”

It’s not just about what Marshall did as a player, from his huge 1984 playoff tackle of the Rams’ Dwayne Crutchfield to his devastating 1990 NFC Championship hit on the 49ers’ Joe Montana.

It’s also how he has given back to the game and the community.

Marshall works with the Leukemia Society of America. He is a board member with Pike Therapeutics, which works on technology to address Parkinson’s.

He is involved with Caring Kind, New York City’s leading expert on Alzheimer’s and dementia caregiving, and has been a strong advocate for retired NFL players’ health.

And he will be spending his 63rd birthday on Oct. 22, at Metuchen Country Club to raise $50,000 for a young woman with cerebral palsy named Michaela.

There is something special about those Giants teams in how they stick together, too, and how the group of them, Marshall included, look after their own — which includes the community at large and also former teammates.

“I’ll share this with you. I’m going show you how unique my group is,” Marshall said. “There’s a group text with about 20 of us on it. And one of our former players just passed away this week. This kid was with us for two years, but he meant something to the guys on the team. This was post-Bill Parcells era. His name was Joey Smith Sr. Joey was a receiver on the ’91 and ’92 Giants.”

“When those guys found out Joey Smith died, some of those guys that played in 1990 and also in 1986 and were part of our team in ’91, I said to them, ‘Guys, we’ve got to be recognized at Joey’s funeral somehow,’” he continued. “So we all put a bunch of money together and sent a big Mass wreath to the funeral home. And those guys stepped up like you wouldn’t believe it.

Marshall said guys chipped in amounts from $30 to $50 to $100. “Then my one teammate showed up with $300 and said, ‘Leonard, let’s do this the right way.’

“We’re retired football players,” Marshall marveled. “This part of our life is over with, but yet the camaraderie and the closeness of the unit we maintain and the organization we represent in its entirety has never wavered from these guys. And it’s fulfilling to my heart to see this, that men can actually love one another that much, regardless of whatever crap they’ve got going on in their lives, to be there for one another. I think it’s just phenomenal.”

Marshall has a prominent platform to stay involved and help people because of how great he was on the field after the Giants drafted him in the 1983 second round.

And he said he started out on that path by connecting himself to Carson and Taylor.

“The one thing you look for early on in your career, and it was extremely important to me, was find guys you can identify with that play your caliber of football — and then play up to that caliber of football with them,” Marshall said. “So the one thing Bill Parcells did for me early on was he introduced me to Harry Carson and Lawrence Taylor. And here were two guys that were in the thick of doing things the right way when I arrived at the New York Giants.”

“We shared the same area of locker space. When you walked into Giants Stadium, you walked into a locker room where it was Harry’s locker, Lawrence’s locker and then mine,” he recalled. “So every day I had to see those guys and every day I had to adopt their workman’s type attitude. My one thing was I didn’t want them to regret having a guy like me as a teammate. I then wanted to elevate my play to if not match theirs be better than theirs. And I knew they wanted me to be that way.”

Marshall listed numerous individuals who played major roles in his and the team’s success, including strength and conditioning coach Johnny Parker and his 5:30 a.m. offseason workouts that included Phil Simms, Joe Morris, Marshall and many more.

But Marshall put in the work, and Parcells got the most out of that defense and that team because the top players bought in and became elite.

“The one thing Bill Parcells talked about, he equated our football team to a winner, “Marshall said. “So we identified a lot with the Los Angeles Lakers. He talked about ‘showtime.’ He talked about being a big-time player in big games, being able to show up. ‘My big guys need to show up in big games.’

“And the one thing I wanted to pride myself on was to be that player to show up in big games, show up when it counted, show that when their best was gonna be their best, I could be better,” he continued. “So I prided myself on that.

Marshall said the proof is on film.

“I look at every big game we played, whether we played the Cowboys, [Washington], the Rams, the 49ers. No matter what, you can go back and pull our games, No. 70 was gonna be accounted for. I wanted coaches to remember who that guy was that was playing right defensive end and defensive tackle. And I did that with effort. I matched the play of guys around me, and I thought I helped elevate guys’ play around me.”

To this day, that Giants defense and those Giant teams remain the franchise’s gold standard. And Marshall’s belief to this day in the closeness and ability of that group is a reminder of why.

“The front seven I played with in ’86, I’d go to war with them anytime,” he said. “You give me those seven guys, I’ll go to war with them anytime. You give me the best offense in football, and I’ll show you how that seven can beat them.”

Watch Marshall’s full interview on the YouTube channel @PLonNFL or listen to the audio podcast on Apple or Spotify.