NEW YORK — Malik Nabers meant what he said: He really might not play in Sunday night’s Giants-Cowboys season opener.

The Giants downgraded Nabers (knee) to questionable on Friday’s final injury report, increasing the likelihood that their top receiver will sit out entirely in Week 1.

Nabers’ designation still leaves the door open to the possibility that he could play and even put himself on a pitch count of limited snaps.

But John Harbaugh’s tense reaction to questions on Wednesday, Nabers’ candid press conference on Thursday and Nabers’ steering of this process to a questionable game status on Friday point to a player who doesn’t appear ready to return from last season’s torn right ACL and meniscus.

“I’ve been wanting to play for so long now, but at the end of the day, I can’t put my career at risk,” Nabers said Thursday. “It’s my career. It’s my body. I know when I’m able to play, and I’ll know when I’m able to do what I want to do. So everybody’s just gotta live with the decision on what I want to do with my career. It’s my life.”

Harbaugh’s Friday dance around questions about Nabers reinforced that the receiver’s game status is a sore subject inside the building and is a decision that is out of the team’s hands.

“To me, you can never rule out anything,” Harbaugh said, when asked if the Giants had to protect themselves from a last-minute Nabers decision. “I mean, in the world we live in, anything can happen at any time. So you never rule out anything. All things are possible. Right?”

The coach said Nabers’ situation is “not that unique,” but the fact is that Nabers standing his ground so publicly against the Giants’ and training staff’s obvious preference is not normal.

It is highly unusual for an NFL player to be a full participant from Wednesday through Friday in practice and still show up with a questionable designation for the game at the end of the week.

Nabers tore the ACL and meniscus in his right knee on Sept. 28, had surgery to fix both on Oct. 28 and then had a second cleanup procedure done in the spring.

His summer rehab went better than expected. It went so well that Harbaugh said on Aug. 24 that it was “reasonable to assume” Nabers was trending towards being available in Week 1 against Dallas, barring a setback.

The next time Nabers spoke, though, he pumped the brakes on any guarantees that he would play in the Sunday night opener. Now sitting out looks like a real possibility.

Veteran teammate Odell Beckham Jr. has rehabbed from plenty of injuries, and he said the mental hurdle can be challenging to get over in that final phase.

“There’s going to be that bit of fear and anxiety, and it’s a natural thing,” Beckham said Friday. “He looks great, but deep down inside, it’s a decision for him, because at the end of the day, let’s say something were to happen again that isn’t good, he’s the one who’s affected. And then his career is then not necessarily in his hands.”

“Teams get to make a decision about keeping you, and then things could go wrong,” Beckham continued. “So my advice for him is when you are ready and you feel it, that’s when you come back. But at the same point in time, you’re not going to feel like you’re 1,000 percent yourself until some point in the early, middle of the season. It’s just something that takes time.”

In Nabers’ defense, coming back this soon does feel early and a bit rushed based on his injury and timeline.

Veteran receiver Tyreek Hill dislocated his knee on Sept. 29 of last season, one day after Nabers’ injury, and tore multiple ligaments, including his ACL. And Hill’s agent, Drew Rosenhaus, recently said that Hill’s “doctors have recommended that he postpone his comeback until perhaps sometime in October.”

Nabers did say Thursday that his “confidence is high” in his knee and his body, but he added, “You have different confidence in a game.”

It sounds like what Nabers is concerned about is the unknown: The late hits at the end of plays, the blindside blocks, the danger of stepping on an opponents’ foot, the unexpected contact and split-second moments where it becomes more difficult to protect himself.

The Giants’ defense has consistently gone out of its way as best it can to take care of the offensive skill players even during padded practices like Wednesday’s. But the Cowboys defense will show no such mercy Sunday.

“You can go out in practice and make plays, but in a game, you never know what you’re gonna see,” Nabers said. “You never know what you’re gonna get.”

A defiant Harbaugh would not concede that Nabers’ indecision complicates or changes his game planning.

“Nothing’s ever perfect,” Harbaugh said. “I mean, if you had it all perfect, then you know everything would be good. But what do they say, everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth, right? That’s what football does, you get punched in the mouth in football, that’s just part of it.”

“Are you going to go down, like my dad says, like a sack of sour apples?” he said. “Not sour like in green apples, sour like in overripe, rotten apples, right? When you get hit in the face, do you go down like a sack of sour apples, or do you stand and deliver your punch back?”

Harbaugh’s decision to release veteran wide receiver Darius Slayton on Monday looks even stranger now, regardless. He cut an established player with proven production who provided depth from a receiving room that is on the verge of not having Nabers on the field for the season opener.

This would probably thrust punt returner Braxton Berrios into a legitimate role on the Giants’ offense on Sunday night.

Only Nabers knows for sure where this is headed, though.

At the start of Friday’s practice, Nabers got down on one knee and prayed. Then he stared at himself in the glass windows of the Giants’ facility as he waited for the special teams period to wrap up.

Harbaugh was coy about how much Nabers did at practice once the viewing period closed.

“He practiced,” the coach said. “It was kind of a slower practice today, so it was a kind of a mental practice today. So I couldn’t really, wouldn’t be fair to say he looked good or bad or whatever in that kind of a practice. But he was good.”

But it turns out “good” is not the same as good to go.

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