Dominate in postseason, then collect all the riches
ODELL Beckham Jr. can express the hope to one day become the highest-paid player in football all he wants, and it is more probable than not that a good number of his NFL brothers are all for him carrying the pay-structure-level banner for them and raising it to the roof if at all possible.
I hope to be the highest-paid media member, and that is even more of a pipe dream, I am sad to report.
Beckham already may be the face of the Giants franchise, but there is no way he deserves more than $21 Million Man Eli Manning, who has won two more Super Bowls than Beckham, who has yet to win a playoff game. Beckham most certainly knows it, but if for some reason he doesn’t, you can bet Giants ownership and management does.
Beckham yearns to be legendary, and though he has done some legendary things in his first three seasons, his teammates are hardly surprised he yearns for a legendary contract.
“It’s just kinda goals and aspirations that I have,” Beckham said. It is a harmless, pie-in-the-sky, Make A Wish, except in this regard:
It puts another bull’s-eye on his $1.8 million back.
“This isn’t for me, this isn’t for Odell Beckham, this is for everybody in the league, people who deserve it,” Beckham said.
Except he is the one who will have to endure the snickers and cries of derision — “Ha, the highest-paid player in football doesn’t drop touchdown passes in a play- off game!” It obviously does not scare him. While he is on board with waiting patiently, with two years left on his contract, for that monster raise that could arrive well before next offseason, his obsession should be to perform like the best receiver in the game, because the Giants will make him the highestpaid receiver in the game if he does, especially with the salary cap rising to $167 million this season and heading north annually.
“Listen, he deserves to get paid,” co-owner John Mara said Friday. “We’re going to pay him.”
Beckham has to know he won’t command Derek Carr money ($25 million annually).
“The quarterback is always going be the highest-paid player,” Mara said.
Of course he is. Just as Manning ($15.27 million) temporarily became the highest-paid player in the NFL
in 2009, Beckham will better Antonio Brown’s $17 million market. And if he redeems himself for last year’s playoff meltdown in Green Bay and helps lead the Giants to Super Bowl XLII, he likely will shatter it with a $20 million ceiling. Catch a mushrooming contract.
The bottom line: Beckham may be a crackling lightning rod because he occasionally marches to the beat of an immature and fiercely independent drummer, but if he truly were the major distraction some portray him to be, there is no way Mara would publicly announce he wants him to be a Giant For Life.
Mara wants him to be a Giant For Life because he believes Beckham can be instrumental in delivering that fifth Lombardi Trophy to East Rutherford, because he hasn’t had a player this impactful since Lawrence Taylor.
“He certainly is a star in every sense of the word,” Mara said. “That presents certain challenges, but I’ll live with those challenges every day of the week to have a player like that.”
For all the firestorms and headlines from Beckham, the Giants hold this truth to be self-evident to the other 31 NFL teams:
We have Odell Beckham Jr., and you don’t.
They would rather tolerate any of Beckham’s wild child idiosyncrasies than play against him, trade any growing pains for the electrifying touchdowns and infecting his team with energy and passion and swagger and will to win.
“We all know what’s going on and if I talk it’s a distraction, if I don’t talk it’s a distraction,” Beckham said. “So, what am I supposed to do? I’m going to speak my mind, I’m going to say how I feel, I’m going to answer pretty much whatever you have to ask and that’s just it.”
While he has been soaring to- wards the bigger-than-life stratosphere, while he nearly has reached when-the-president-sneezes-it’s-news territory, we forget Beckham has not been on the police blotter, he has not been suspended for drugs or for violating the league’s personal conduct policy. And so the Giants believe that the rewards far outweigh the lightning-rod risks. It all comes with the package, and the Giants will pay for the package.
Giants fans can’t take their eyes off No. 13 any more than Yankees fans can keep their eyes off Aaron Judge, but Mara and Steve Tisch don’t need their marquee attraction to fill MetLife Stadium. They need him to help get them back to the Super Bowl and win it. And if he does that this season, if he plays his best in January and February when legends are made, they will show him the money. Just not Derek Carr or Eli Manning money.