Last night, Odell Beckham Jr. lost his mind again,
something that’s starting to become a troubling trend for a guy whose early
career trajectory had him positioned to become one of the greatest receivers in
the history of the league.
Beckham was legitimately terrible last night, as he appeared to be more concerned with wrestling opposing
corners than running routes or catching passes. He was extremely lucky to not
be ejected in the first half when he aggressively bumped an official, and his
demeanor on the sidelines was that of a man who was lost and irritated. All of
this culminated in perhaps the worst game of his career, a non-impactful 3
receptions for 23 yards, none of which came after halftime.
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We all know how this started; Beckham, a mid-first
round pick in 2014, burst onto the national scene that season with one of the
most impressive rookie campaigns the league had ever seen: 91 catches, 1,305
yards, and 12 TDs in just 12 games. Included in that magical year was this “what the hell was that” catch against Dallas during a Sunday Night Football game, a grab that transformed him into an international superstar
and the toast of New York City.
He followed up his spectacular first season with an
equally great second year: 96 catches, 1,450 yards, and 13 TDs in 15 games, as he most importantly, at least in my view, singlehandedly won like three
fantasy football games for me. And just this year, in Week 3, Beckham became
the fastest player in NFL history to 200 catches and 3,000 receiving yards,
achieving both in just 30 games.
The talent this guy has is undeniable. He’s
lightning quick, he’s a great leaper, he’s tough as nails, and there’s not a
receiver in the league with better hands. Physically, he’s limited by nothing,
but the problem with Beckham is that he’s now starting to reach the Terrell
Owens Zone, a space where his immense talents are being overshadowed by sideline
outbursts and his inability to control his emotions.
To be fair, Owens and Beckham aren’t perfect matches
for each other; OBJ hasn’t thrown teammates, coordinators, and coaches under
the bus on multiple occasions like T.O. did, actions that destroyed team
chemistry and crippled multiple franchises. Then again, Owens never allowed his
anger and frustrations to keep him from doing his job on the field during the
game. In last year’s Carolina game, Odell went absolutely crazy, casting aside
his on-field responsibilities in favor of headhunting Josh Norman for
60 minutes. Supposedly, Norman and the Panthers threatened Beckham with a bat
while questioning his sexuality, insinuating multiple times that he was gay. This is
spelled out in their post-game comments; Norman told reporters, “You’re going
to be Michael Jackson and go around and dancing and playing and a lot of other
stuff and not be a football player and not train the way you’re supposed to
train. It goes to show. I hope I pulled that mask off. I pulled back the face
of what that dude really is”. Former Cowboys’ receiver Michael Irvin, a friend
of Beckham’s, commented on the gay slurs Beckham faced during the season,
saying, “He deals with it a lot. For some reason, everybody goes after him with
gay slurs. He’s a different kind of dude. He has the hairdo out, he’s not the
big muscular kind of dude. The ladies all love him…. I told him he can’t let
stuff that people say get to you”.
Whether or not Beckham is actually gay, and
regardless of whether not the Panthers went after him for it, it’s
unfortunately become a referendum on his career. The book is out on him now;
talk trash, be overly physical, and crack him just seconds after the whistle
blows, and you can destroy him mentally and take him out of the game. Corners
all over the league know they can’t contain OBJ, so they target the only thing
that can; Odell himself. When he clobbers himself with the
kicking net, or sheds a tear on the sidelines, the opposing defense
cheers, because they know they’ve won.
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Odell has become the Russell Westbrook of the NFL, a
supremely talented player whose fatal flaw may also be his greatest asset. For Westbrook,
it’s the “balls to the wall” competitive attitude he brings to every game. From
the opening tip to the final horn, Russ is in attack mode, flying up and down
the court like a Red Bull-infused Kamikaze pilot. That style of play wears opposing
teams down throughout the game, and it makes Westbrook one of the most
dangerous players in the league, and a constant threat to score. However, it
also oftentimes leaves his teammates feeling unimportant and disinterested, as
they become part of the audience for “Russell’s Circus”, a traveling show where
everyone stand around with their popcorn and watch Westbrook go one-on-five
every night.
Odell’s competitive fire and relentless, “I’m going
to fight you to the death” mindset work great when he’s engaged in the
activities that lead to playing winning football, but the problem is it’s so
easy to throw him into a funk and get him to challenge the entire defense to a literal
fight. Too often, he forgets that the greatest asset he can bring to his team is
beating his defender deep, not beating them down.
Unfortunately, you can’t take the fire out of
Westbrook or Beckham without completely changing who they are as players. If
Russell takes his foot off the gas even slightly, then he’s way less effective,
because he only knows how to play one speed; the rest of them don’t work and he
ends up running around the court, unsure of what he should be doing. The same
goes for Beckham; you can’t have “tear up the league Odell” without “tear up on
the sidelines Odell”, because those two are so intertwined. The truth is,
Beckham is an undersized receiver. He doesn’t have Julio Jones’s or A.J. Green’s
size, so he’s forced to rely on his emotions to push himself to the next level.
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So how does he fix this? Can he?
I don’t know. However, I’m certain it doesn’t help
when his own quarterback, Eli Manning, who was also terrible last night, throws
him under the bus after the game, or when Beckham himself acts like the
officials are targeting him without reason. Um, Odell, have you watched the Norman
tape from last year? You made an ass of yourself all day and drew multiple
unsportsmanlike conduct penalties, and you’ve shown you can be provoked into unnecessary
violence based on to the words people
use towards you. I don’t happen to think it’s very flattering for the NFL when
its players target a particular athlete with an abundance of homophobic slurs,
but I also don’t necessarily blame them for doing it either, because at the end
of the day, they’re trying to do a job, which is to keep Beckham from catching
passes. And I definitely don’t have a problem with any other trash talk, or
just-after-the-whistle hits or bumps. All of these have proven to be effective
strategies in throwing OBJ into a funk and getting him off his game.
At the end of the day, it comes down to the last
sentence of that Michael Irvin quote from earlier; “I told him he can’t let
stuff that people say get to you”.
Here’s a lesson we all learned, or at least should’ve,
in elementary school: if someone gives you a nickname you don’t like, or makes
fun of you, the best thing you can do is act like it doesn’t bother you. You
can do this by ignoring it, or laughing along with them. This is so counter to
what we hear nowadays, but IT’S OK TO LAUGH AT YOURSELF, and IT’S OK TO MAKE
FUN OF OUR DIFFERENCES. When someone is “bullying” you, the response they want
is for you to get angry, but if you act like their words don’t matter, or if
you agree that they were funny, then you’ve completely cut the legs out from
under them and everything that they were trying to do. We spend way too much
time caring about what everyone else thinks of us, and oftentimes our entire
self-esteem and self-worth are tied up in the approval of others.
Odell is a monster on the football field, and almost
every single player in the league would kill to have the success he’s had. He
should spend his Sundays laughing at everyone’s pathetic attempts to destroy
him with words. Josh Norman’s opinion of him, and the things he says about him
shouldn’t matter or bother Beckham. He’s his own man, a supremely talented
millionaire with Hall of Fame ability who should be shedding off words like
they’re defensive backs trying to cover him. Let’s hope he eventually figures that out.
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