SORRY? ’DELL NO!
After being forced to apologize to team, Odell says he doesn’t regret speaking from heart on state of Giants
Pat Shurmur thought he handled Odell Beckham controversy by having WR address the team, but now OBJ says he isn’t actually sorry.
Six days after the Giants had Odell Beckham Jr. apologize to his teammates for his ESPN interview, Beckham began Friday night's Episode Five of his “I AM MORE: OBJ” UNINTERRUPTED Facebook docu-series with an unusual choice of words.
“Bro, I'm sorry that I'm not gonna apologize from my heart,” Beckham said, with no question preceding, to open a video that extensively addressed the interview fallout. “I don't feel like you deserve an apology for one, and I don't feel like it's necessary for me to apologize for how I feel.”
Beckham spent a large percentage of this 11-minute episode of “I AM MORE: OBJ” entitled “THE DIALOGUE” on the reaction to last week's interview with ESPN's Josina Anderson and Lil Wayne, in which Beckham made critical comments about Eli Manning, his teammates and playing in New York.
He also expressed optimism in Friday's video that the Giants (1-5) “can pull it together and still make a run.” He admitted he's made mistakes on the field, too, and said: “I am trying my very best to make sure I am doing my part and then some.”
He also said he's trying to follow in the footsteps of LeBron James in being a meaningful, difference-making, impactful voice. And he even admitted he doesn't know how to do it yet.
The biggest takeaway for the Giants, however, is going to be that Beckham is continuing to talk at least somewhat defiantly about his true feelings in an interview that angered virtually every meaningful person in the organization.
“If I'm not allowed to put my foot down and say I'm tired of losing, that's tough for me to deal with, bro,” Beckham said later in the interview. “Like, I'm having a hard time dealing with that.”
The Giants already fined Beckham, read him the riot act, and had him apologize to the team for the ESPN interview. There is no telling how they'll act once they learned that Beckham, in response to being reprimanded, continued to go on camera and discuss his true feelings.
“If I feel bad for anything (after the ESPN interview), I feel bad for one that people have to answer questions about it and not knowing my true intention or where my heart is in the message,” Beckham said. “I feel bad that the message was -I won't even put it on someone else, not taken wrongly -- but the message was perceived wrong.
“And as long as I'm here -which I signed a deal to be here for five years, not knowing the future of the organization, not knowing a new GM, a new coach, what direction that they're going to be going in -- I signed it as an oath of loyalty to New York, ya know?” Beckham said. “There's no place better to win than here. There's nothing more I want to do than bring championships to this place. And every year. (It's) not like yeah I want to win one or two. I want to win it for the next 10 years, if I'm playing football for the next 10 years. That's always gonna be my mentality.
That's where Beckham continued: “If I'm not allowed to put my foot down and say I'm tired of losing, that's tough for me to deal with, bro. Like, I'm having a hard time dealing with that.”
Beckham went on to stress how much he worked to get back healthy for this season.
“I think a thing people forget, so I lost my entire season last year and didn't know if I would ever be able to be the same again,” Beckham said. “And I worked and I busted my ass. Every single day I got up and I went and worked out, whether I'm doing 10 hours of rehab.
“Like I really went hard this offseason to repair myself — mind body and soul — and put me back together, to be able to come here and do what? Do the same thing that I was just doing? No,” OBJ added. “I worked way too hard to just even be able to play a football again. I'm not gonna be OK with being mediocre. I'm not gonna be OK with being average.”
Beckham said of the ESPN interview: “I felt like is was supposed to be a safe space and all these things, and look, the things that I said, could they have been -- could they approach a better or different way? Could they have been handled a different way?
“I think when you look back on anything and there's things that are conflicting or things that get mixed up, you always look back and be like it could have been handled a different way,” he continued. “I know it may have came off however it came off, but my message was to be nothing more than encouraging, everybody to be their very best, to pick it up even more than you have, to dedicate and sacrifice more than you ever have.
“And if anything could be taken from this message, to me in my eyes is that I actually care. I really just deep down and to my core, my soul, care about what I'm doing.”