Leave it to IHOP to sneak under the wire of 2025 and give us not only one of the best sports ads this season, but potentially an all-timer. Eating 24 hours of pancakes is a long-established punishment for finishing last in fantasy leagues, and that got taken a step further with Malik Nabers hawking IHOP pancakes, before getting brutally roasted by a child for having a terrible year.
Not only does the Giants WR get skewered by an IHOP server who laughs at him, sarcastically saying “just like you helped everyone’s fantasy season,” before the real champion of this shows up: A small child who isn’t taken back with wonder than an NFL player is in his local pancake joint, but rather that it’s a chance to roast him.
“Are you Malik Nabers?! I wasted my first round pick on you! Ugh!”
The assumption was that Nabers was going to take the next step to becoming one of the best receivers in the NFL after finishing with over 1,200 yards and 7 touchdowns as a rookie. Sadly, that never came to be, as Nabers tore his ACL four games into the season and was out for the entire 2025 year. It killed the Giants offense, prevented us from really seeing what Nabers and rookie QB Jaxson Dart could do together, and was a contributing factor in Brian Daboll getting fired as head coach.
Ultimately players get way too much grief on social media about their performances for fantasy football, as if NFL stars really want to have bad games just to screw over someone who took them in a league. Kudos to Nabers for taking it all in stride and turning this into both a joke, and one of the best ads in a long time.
