Hall of Famer Carter to OBJ: ‘Enough of this stupidness’
It’s tough to find a fall guy when Instagram is involved. Hall of Fame receiver and Odell Beckham Jr.’s mentor Cris Carter said he was “disgusted” with the Giants star on Monday morning, days after a video surfaced of him in bed with a French model, a brown cigarette and a white powder. “I’m so disappointed and I expect better from him,” Carter said on his FOX Sports show, “First Things First.” “It’s enough with the excuses. Time for you to grow up and stop being a little boy. If you want to be a national brand, damn act like it. If you want someone to pay you as the highest-paid receiver in the history of the game, damn act like it. Enough is enough. I’m sick of talking about him and the negative aspects. I can’t talk about him and his releases. I can’t talk about him catching the ball in traffic. Why? Because of this? This matters. Your image in sports will always matter. And you are in sports. You are not some rapper.”
Carter worked out with Beckham last offseason, when the receiver was skipping Giants OTAs. Beckham received criticism for missing the voluntary workouts, but Carter strongly defended him.
Beckham’s seemingly only response to the video was tweeting, “Old news still makes a good story…. I guess.” But Beckham was recently in Paris for Fashion Week, lending credence to the thought the video was recent.
“You are in the NFL. You are under contract with the New York Football Giants,” said Carter, who bat- tled drug and alcohol addiction early in his NFL career.
“Act like it matters. Because they’ve had other Giants players along their career, it didn’t matter to them. And it affected their arc as far as how great we consider them to be. The greatest Giant ever [Lawrence Taylor] struggled off the field. Until this day, he still does not have his life under control. To see another great athlete and to see that happen to them, I will not sit here and act like this is normal. No, it’s not normal.”
Beckham missed most of last season with a fractured ankle and is entering the final year of his rookie contract. He has said in the past that he wants to be the highest-paid player in the NFL, but this latest move had some — including WFAN’s Boomer Esiason — questioning whether the Giants should offer Beckham any longterm deal.
“This guy is an unbelievable talent, as talented as anyone I have ever seen,” Carter said. “So I am disgusted with the whole thing. OBJ, call me, man. Enough of this stupidness.”