OBJ: Super Bowl Champion?

The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Odell Beckham Jr.

 Occasionally you’ll hear someone say – on sports radio, on ESPN, at a bar – that it is pointless to compare players across eras because the game has changed so much, or that it is a waste of time to debate whether a quarterback is elite because elite is an arbitrary term, or some such thing.

These people are morons.  

Every sports argument, indeed every sports conversation ever had, is ultimately about one thing:  How good is X?  How good is that:

- player

- play

- team

- game

- season

- coach

- GM

- sport

- rule

- manager

- call

- trade

- official

- prospect

- announcer

Heck, sports fans will debate beer commercial quality.  Replay has given us a whole list of new things to debate – how good is that camera angle, the reversed call, the speed of the decision.

“How good is X?” is the whole reason we have sports conversations.

Which brings me to Odell Beckham Jr.

The OBJ Trade

In March of 2019, the New York Giants traded the 3-time Pro Bowler to the Cleveland Browns for strong safety Jabrill Peppers and two draft picks. The trade was surprising for two reasons, but unsurprising for a third.

Surprising Reason #1

In August of 2018 then-GM Dave Gettleman signed Beckham to a 5-year, $90m contract extension.  On February 27, 2019 he said "We didn't sign Odell to trade him.  That's all I need to say about that."  Two weeks later he traded him to the Browns.

Now look, Dave Gettleman is the worst kind of stupid…the stupid guy who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else.  He showed that with his two biggest draft picks, Saquon Barkley and Daniel Jones.

But still, the Giants gave every indication of wanting a long-term relationship with OBJ…until they didn’t.

Surprising Reason #2

It was more shocking because OBJ wasn't merely a Pro Bowler - he was through 5 seasons one of the best wide receivers in the history of the league.  Injuries in his 4th and 5th seasons slowed him down a bit, but his pro-rated 16-game numbers for the Giants look like this:

106 Catches, 1485 yards, 12 touchdowns.  

I mean, holy crap!

And by “slowed him down a bit”, well…in his 5th and final season in New York despite only playing 12 games, he caught 77 passes for 1052 yards and 6 touches.  

In the 3 seasons since, no Giant wide receiver has come anywhere near those 12-game #s in a full season.  Indeed, in a 17-game season this year, the top totals for Giants receivers was 40/521/2.  Jeez.

And he wasn’t just wildly productive.  He was extremely entertaining.  We forget sometimes that we watch sports to be entertained, and boy did OBJ put on a show in a Giants uniform.

The Not Surprising Reason

Odell was, as coaches like to say, a world-class distraction.  

Ill-advised boat trips, sideline tantrums, on-field tantrums, questionable hotel videos, and perhaps the worst thing a wide receiver can do – not backing up his quarterback to the press.  His 2-time Super Bowl MVP quarterback that is.  Oh, and then there was this…

The Giants’ brass ultimately decided all that on-field productivity wasn’t worth the off-field nonsense.

How Giants Fans Reacted

In the week after the trade, I conducted an extremely scientific survey of every Giants fans I know.  The results were as follows:

- Every Giants fan in their 20’s said “Nooooooo!” (because of Surprising Reason #2)

- Every Giants fan over 50 said “Good Riddance!” (because of the Unsurprising Reason)

I had never seen such a striking disagreement on the “How good is X?” question.  

In the years since, it has certainly looked like the old guys had it right.  His first season in Cleveland was pretty good* (74/1035/4) but not the explosive season everyone expected with Baker Mayfield throwing to him.  And the two seasons since have been filled with injuries and unproductive play.

* by “pretty good”, I mean “way way way better than any Giants receiver since”

The Giants meanwhile, got two pretty good players out of the deal in Peppers and Dexter Lawrence.

But here’s the thing:  the old guys weren’t saying “Good Riddance!” because they thought OBJ was about to fall off a statistical cliff.  The old guys basically didn’t care how awesome he was.  Their feeling was that he was a bad locker room guy and the Giants couldn’t win as long as he was kicking nets, going boating, and pretending to pee in the end zone.

Fair enough.  So, how have the Giants done since removing this cancer from the locker room?

Well, they haven’t been the absolute worst team in football.  At 14-35, they did edge out the Jaguars, Lions, and Jets (between 10-14 wins each).  But it’s been pretty putrid.

The Browns, while disappointing, have had a winning record and a playoff appearance during the OBJ years.  

Ram Tough

But something funny happened on OBJ’s trip to irrelevance.  Mid-season, the Rams picked him up after Robert Woods’ injury.  In a half season with the Rams he was okay – 27 catches for 305 yards.  More importantly, he found the end zone 5 times.

* Again, sorry to keep pointing this out, but he had more than twice as many TD catches in half a season for the Rams than Darius Slayton, who led the Giants with…2 TDs in 17 games.  Kenny Golladay, the G-Men’s big offseason acquisition, the man who was supposed to fill OBJ’s still-empty cleats as a star receiver, had (checks notes…) zero TD catches in 14 games

In the playoffs he’s been better.  Over two games he has 15 catches and 182 yards.  He is, for the first time since 2019, a legitimate threat.

He's not a star receiver again.  His productivity is certainly helped out by the fact that the best wide receiver in football is on the Rams.  Cooper Kupp's awesomeness attracts a defensive backfield's attention, and allows Beckham space to make some plays.  I suspect OBJ's injuries took 1/10th of a step away from him - and a 1/10th of a step was enough to transform him from a super-weapon to (in the parlance of Bill Parcells) a JAG - Just Another Guy.

And, uh, he still has the temperament of an unpleasant toddler...

BUT - it turns out a team can win with such a terrible person on its roster.  It turns out that removing such a terrible person from its roster doesn’t unlock a winning formula.

By this evening, Odell Beckham Jr. might be a Super Bowl champion.  At the very least, he will be an NFC champion.  

And the Giants continue their sad rebuild.