![]() ![]() In drafting Barkley with the second overall pick, and in signing Beckham to his record deal in August, the Giants declared their intent to surround the declining Manning with enough explosive playmakers to lift him back to contending form. "The running back, Barkley, is a first-ballot Hall of Famer if he stays healthy, but the problem is he's not a quarterback." "Now they are in a full-blown rebuild, and 38-year-old Eli is still there," one league executive said Tuesday night. The fast-breaking Browns are all set to fill the LeBron void in Cleveland. They sent Beckham to go play with his dear friend and LSU teammate, Jarvis Landry, and dynamic young quarterback Baker Mayfield, who stands as the polar opposite of the Giants' Manning. Mara, Gettleman and Shurmur ultimately threw up their hands and said enough's enough. Tom Coughlin, two-time Super Bowl-champion coach with the Giants, once said that Beckham brought qualities to the Giants "the likes of which I've never seen." And yet three head coaches (Coughlin, Ben McAdoo and Pat Shurmur), two general managers (Jerry Reese and Gettleman) and one team president and co-owner (John Mara) could never quite figure out how to manage Beckham and how to channel his boundless energy in a less disruptive direction. Beckham engaged cornerback Josh Norman in the octagon, lost a fistfight with a kicking net, proposed marriage to said kicking net, took a boating vacation before his dreadful playoff performance against Green Bay - and then punched a hole in a Lambeau Field wall - and sat with Lil Wayne and ESPN's Josina Anderson and questioned everything from Eli Manning's arm to the team's heart. The old-school Giants have a card-carrying old-school GM in Gettleman, and there is no doubt that the receiver's high-maintenance ways contributed to his exit. "We got him until he's 108," the GM joked that late-summer day.Īs it played out, Gettleman got rid of the receiver before he even turned 27. Gettleman made this move not even seven months after signing Beckham to a record five-year, $95 million contract. On Tuesday night, Giants general manager Dave Gettleman traded Beckham to the Cleveland Browns for the 17th overall pick in next month's draft, a third-round pick and safety Jabrill Peppers, who played his high school ball about a dozen miles from MetLife Stadium. That was a window into Beckham's career with the New York Giants: moments of breathtaking brilliance set against a mind-numbing series of defeats. It was a really minor thing, but I'm pretty sure it was the first time in my three decades of sportswriting that a star athlete had done that.īeckham would use that right hand and those endless fingers he said were passed down from his mother, a former track star, to make perhaps the NFL's most stunning regular-season touchdown catch ever in a November loss to the Dallas Cowboys. I remember stopping at his locker during his rookie year when the wide receiver stuck out his right hand, with fingers as long as garden hoses, and introduced himself by name before I could do the same. made it clear early that he was a bit of a different guy. Operating without a plan: How the Giants failed Odell Beckham Jr. ![]() You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser
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