CONSIDER TRADING ODELL:
Giants should at least hear OBJ trade offers if serious about culture change
The case for trading Odell Beckham Jr. is based on John Mara’s and Dave Gettleman’s shared ideal of what the Giants should stand for. The club president and his new GM are committed to restoring stability — and by extension the image of stability — to a franchise that plummeted to unprecedented and embarrassing lows in a controversy-filled 2017. They want to be back on the tabloid back pages, in other words, for their victories in football, and not for consistent off-field defeats. This explains their recommitment to Eli Manning (because his performance surely doesn’t). It explains, in conjunction with salary cap considerations, their ongoing roster purge, which continued with Sunday’s release of Domi- nique Rodgers-Cromartie. And it’s even behind the hiring of Gettleman himself: He is a no-nonsense football lifer who romanticizes the way the Giants used to win, a process he had a hand in for many years, and who had no problem telling popular players to take a walk while running the Carolina Panthers. Beckham, 25, undoubtedly has damaged his market value at the worst possible time with this latest Instagram video that appears to show him holding a thick brown cigarette, with a white powder in front of the woman next to him. The mere appearance of alleged and potential drug use, at the absolute very least, reflects that Beckham continues to exercise poor judgment about the situations he enters while traveling the world representing the Giants and Nike. He has never had more to lose as his agent negotiates with the Giants on a long-term contract extension, and it is therefore likely that he will lose a ton of leverage and dollars as a result of this decision.
If the Giants were prepared to give Beckham a five-year, $90 million contract at $60 million guaranteed, for example — a deal that would make him the No. 1 wide receiver in annual salary at $18 million — perhaps the team is now inclined to only offer a four-year, $60 million extension with $20 million guaranteed.
A $15 million annual salary would put Beckham only fifth among wide receivers, behind even his LSU teammate and best friend, the Browns’ Jarvis Landry ($15.9 million on his franchise tag). And the reduced term and guaranteed money would be natural for a team hesitant to invest too much in such a volatile and reckless employee.
Or maybe the Giants will cut off negotiations altogether, knowing they can control Beckham for at least three more years by having him play on his fifth-year option in
2018 and applying consecutive franchise tags in 2019 and 2020.
Mara, however, has to have reached a breaking point of wondering when Beckham’s distractions are going to end.
He has to expect that Beckham, who reportedly is seeking $20 million-plus annually on a new deal, would hold out if the Giants lowballed one of the league’s most talented athletes, even after this video hit social media. He does have a five-year, $25 million Nike endorsement contract, after all. It’s not like he needs the money.
The Giants’ president and coowner has to recognize that as long as Beckham is a Giant, there will be plenty more days like these when the Giants aren’t the story and Beckham is. Often it will be for the wrong reasons.
Former GM Jerry Reese, who drafted Beckham in 2014 and supported him until the day he was fired, told his receiver it was time to grow up after the Boat Trip and Great Lambeau Wall Punch of the 2016 season. Mara sat down with Beckham last fall about his canine urination touchdown celebration.
Mara then said in January that he wanted Beckham to talk to new coach Pat Shurmur to have “a good understanding of how we are going to act.” And yet the distractions and the bad decisions continue.
I truly believe that when Beckham sits in these meetings with Reese, Mara, Ben McAdoo or Shurmur, he is earnest in trying to mature, learn and do the right thing. I’m not sure what the disconnect is between his intentions and his actions. And it’s true: Beckham isn’t getting arrested or hurting people physically (with the exception of that Josh Norman head-tohead spear). More often his mistakes are simply immature outbursts or decisions.
And he works his butt off. There is no question about how diligently Beckham prepares to excel.
Mara and the Giants, though, are tired of looking like they are willing to tolerate lawlessness in the name of wins, especially when they’re not winning. (Granted, Manning’s ongoing memorabilia fraud court case is an example of how the organization’s issues are far from limited to Beckham; they just remain adamant they did nothing wrong.)
Beckham is an incredible player, and Shurmur would be crazy as a first-year head coach to not want OBJ on the field next fall. But as long as Beckham refuses to fall in line, this will remain The Odell Beckham Show featuring Eli Manning and the Giants, and not the other way around.
And that’s why I think Gettleman should pick up the phone and gauge the temperature around the NFL for interest in his superstar receiver: Not because he’s not a great player. Not because it makes the Giants a better team tomorrow.
But because the Giants’ new mission statement and the attention Beckham often brings to them are not a match, no matter how good he is for business on the Sundays on which he excels. And a player of Beckham’s caliber would bring back a return significant enough to retool the Giants’ roster.
NFL GMs have shown a ravenous appetite for trading this offseason. So Gettleman should get back on the horn with the Rams’ Les Snead, who just traded LB Alec Ogletree to the Giants, and check how eager offensive genius head coach Sean McVay would be to team Beckham with Jared Goff and Todd Gurley — knowing that Beckham spends his offseasons training in L.A. and loves the West Coast.
Gettleman also should call John Dorsey, the Browns’ GM, and see if he could package Beckham to move the Giants up from two to the first overall pick in April’s draft to get their preferred player. Cleveland also might have to include 2019 first- and second-round picks to get it done. The Giants would be restocked with assets, while Beckham and Landry would be reunited. There is a chance, of course, that other NFL teams would balk at paying Beckham big bucks if the Giants didn’t want to do so themselves. The Giants also want to be sure that Beckham is back to 100 percent healthy from last season’s ankle surgery before making any decision, and his health would affect any trade, too. But it’s impossible, in my opinion, to listen to what Mara and Gettleman have said they will and will not tolerate this offseason and to not consider that the organization’s new direction may result in Beckham leaving town. It wouldn’t be a popular decision among many Giants fans, but Gettleman isn’t here to be popular; he’s here to make the decisions he feels are best for the franchise. So what will triumph: talent or culture? Production or perception? I’m not sure anyone knows at the moment, maybe not even the Giants themselves.