KRYK SLANTS
OBJ makes one Giant mistake, putting himself over the team ... Coach Shurmer not happy with stunt ... Crowell runs his way into Jets history
Odell Beckham Jr., team player?
Yeah right.
That’s what he’d like us all to believe, after he went behind the New York Giants’ back last Tuesday to do a clandestine interview with ESPN, which aired Sunday morning.
In it, the talented wide receiver threw just about everyone on the team under the bus — in a manner seldom seen in-season, especially by a player against his team that just six months earlier rewarded him with a contract extension worth nearly a tenth of a billion dollars. Ahhh, life in the 2010s. So many hard-done-by people. From head coach Pat Shurmur and the new offensive coaching staff to teammates, especially quarterback Eli Manning, Beckham blasted the Giants in hurtful, gashing ways he probably doesn’t understand. Otherwise, presumably, he wouldn’t have said them publicly. Or maybe he said them because he wants to be traded.
Regardless, it was shocking to see and hear any NFL player air more dirty laundry than a Fiji rugby club in monsoon season. If you missed it over the long weekend, here’s just some of what the fifthyear receiver said:
On whether Manning is the right QB for the Giants: “I feel like he’s not going to get out (of ) the pocket. He’s not — we know Eli’s not running it. But is it a matter-of-time issue? Can he still throw it? Yeah, but it’s been pretty safe (throws) ... I want to go over the top of somebody.”
On whether the Giants have an issue at QB: “Uh, I don’t know.”
On his frustration with defences scheming against New York with two deep safeties, game after game, year after year since 2014. At least that’s the gospel according to OBJ: “That’s how they play me. And there’s no (one) to say, ‘How do we beat this?’ I feel like I’m being outschemed, and I also don’t have a chance to, like, do something. Oh, I gotta take a slant and 60? Not to say it’s not fun, but I want those easy touchdowns, too. I watch everybody across the league, all the top receivers get the ball the way they should, and if they don’t, they say something about it.”
On whether he’s happy in New York, despite just agreeing in April to a five-year, $90-million contract extension: “That’s a tough question.”
On weather in the U.S. Northeast: “I’m not a fan of the cold.”
On his general unhappiness on the Giants: “I don’t feel like I’m being given the opportunity to be the very best that I can, to bring that every single day — and that’s really all I want to do, to bring that every single day. Since I’ve been here I’ve put up numbers, records have been broken and all those good things. (It’s) not to say (that means) nothing to me, but I know they could have been double, or triple, whatever, they are now. That’s the part that bothers me.”
But otherwise, hey, OBJ is one happy dude.
The fallout since Josina
Anderson’s interview with him aired has been about what you’d expect involving a top player from Big Blue in the Big Apple.
Reports said Shurmur was livid upon learning what Beckham said. Although FOX Sports’ Jay Glazer reported that Shurmur made Beckham apologize to his teammates before Sunday’s 33-31 loss at Carolina, both men denied it afterward.
Clearly, however, Shurmur was not happy about OBJ’s
interview stunt, which he arranged without knowledge of the Giants’ PR staff, and on his day off last week. Here’s what the Giants’ first-year head coach said when asked about it at his post-game news conference:
“All right, listen. I’m going to answer all the drama questions right now ... I addressed it with Odell. I addressed it with our team. I publicly declared that I didn’t agree with his comments and I asked anybody that was interested if they wanted clarification (to) go to Odell, because he’s a big man.
“Now, I’m not going to give the public a pound of flesh on this, all right? That would make me small, not strong. And these are the kind of things, in my opinion, when we have the locker room that we have, that will help galvanize them, because the locker room took care of it. And that is all I’m saying on it. Finito. Done. Let’s talk football, not drama.”
For his part, Manning said he hadn’t “heard anything” about it, adding that he and Beckham “have a great relationship.”
Safety Landon Collins said the same things, more or less.
Beckham, who led Giants receivers Sunday with eight catches for 131 yards and a TD, and who also threw for a TD, was asked afterward if he regretted doing the ESPN interview and saying all those hurtful things.
Uh, no. He actually was proud of it:
“I don’t regret anything that I said. If it took that for us to come together as a team like we did today, I can take that every single time. I spoke to the team just to kind of relay the message that sometimes stuff comes off the wrong way. Words can be portrayed in any kind of light.” Mm-hmmmm.
“But the way we responded as a team to what was said, I felt like it would’ve been too easy after what was said, and after what I said to them for us to come in here and have heart, energy and all that stuff. Grit, whatever the words you want to use for that. We had it today, and we came up short, but I’m proud of this team, and this is the team that we are going to be for the rest of the season.”
Beckham actually thinks he healed, not harmed, the locker room. Incredible.
If I ran the Giants, I’d be trading him. ASAP.
Odell Beckham Jr. isn’t going to become a better locker-room presence as time goes on, as he becomes more senior to more players, and pockets more of that $65-million guaranteed deal.
He just wasn’t made for the New York media market. He might be one of the NFL’s most impactful wide receivers, and might be able to stab far-flung footballs with three fingers, but he’ll always be a big distraction in the Big Apple.
NBC Sports commentator and former NFL head coach
Tony Dungy was so upset watching the Beckham interview, he later said this on the air:
“As a head coach, for 13 years, my first meeting every year was to tell the players, ‘If you have a problem with any of the coaching, you come to me. My door is open. If you have a problem with your players, we solve it in the locker room. You do not go to the media to air your dirty laundry.’
“That was just ridiculous.”
FIVE FAST FACTS
Detroit has taken three straight from Green Bay, and six of the past 10 since November 2013 ... Tennessee has failed to score more than six points through three quarters in three of five games ... The last starting QB of 2018 to not throw an interception?
Drew Brees of New Orleans ... Isaiah Crowell’s 219 rush yards Sunday vs. Denver not only are the most in the NFL this season, they’re the most in New York Jets history ...
Graham Gano’s 63-yard field goal that lifted the Panthers over the Giants is tied for the second longest in NFL history, after Matt Prater’s 64-yarder for Denver in 2013.
TAKING A KNEE
Perhaps blurred behind the Houston Texans’ 0-3 start a couple weeks ago was the fact that second-year QB Deshaun Watson, coming off reconstructive knee surgery after blowing out an ACL last October, by then had got back up to speed as his dazzling, dual-threat self.
His performances since on the past two Sundays — overtime wins at Indianapolis and, this past Sunday night, over Dallas — have cemented that fact. And how.
The 23-year-old has now thrown for 375-plus yards and rushed for 35-plus yards in three consecutive games. Not only has no other player in NFL history done it in back-to-back games, let alone in three straight, but Hall of Famer Steve Young is the only other player to have done it more than once, ever.
So many of these niche NFL offensive stats overwhelm us these days, to the point of lost meaningfulness. But Watson, who’s still just starting to figure out pro football, but the above factoid speaks to how dangerous an NFL QB Watson already has become. And that it’s no fluke.
“He can sit in the pocket and make a throw, he can get us out of the pocket and get some yards under his feet,” said Texans receiver DeAndre Hopkins, who took a beautifully touched short pass from Watson in OT against the Cowboys, spun two or three times and ran 49 yards into game-winning field-goal range.
“A lot of people put him in a box sometimes, and think that he’s just a running quarterback. But you saw the amazing throw that he made at the end.”
Item No. 1 on Watson’s still-needs-to-learn list is protecting himself better. Countless times inside the 10-yard line he kept pulling the ball down and trying to dance into the end zone, as he so often did in college with Clemson. Can’t do that in the pros. Each time, Cowboys defenders clobbered him.
In fact, Watson has been hit a league-high 53 times already. He won’t last the season at that rate.
“(I’m) in the huddle telling him to get down. I need him!” Hopkins said. “That’s what I tell him, honestly. Don’t take those hits unless you have to. But he’s a warrior. He wants to get in the end zone every time he gets the ball in his hands.”