The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Beckham’s behavior vexes Giants co-owner John Mara
Odell Beckham Jr. is in the Giants’ doghouse.
The wide receiver’s antics after scoring his first touchdown of the season on Sunday have drawn the scorn of the team’s most powerful patriarch, CEO and coowner John Mara.
“I do not want to get into a discussion about this, but I will say that I am very unhappy with Odell’s behavior on Sunday and we intend to deal with it internally,” Mara said in a statement the team released on Tuesday. It was what he said in an email to the New York Post earlier in the day.
It is the first indication that the team is disturbed not just by the immediate result of Beckham’s actions — a 15-yard penalty that forced the Giants to kick off from deep in their own territory on the ensuing play — but the optics of them.
Ben McAdoo, on a conference call on Monday, did not pass any judgment on Beckham’s celebration.
“It’s real simple,” McAdoo said. “I don’t want to kick off from the 20-yard line. It doesn’t help our team. It makes it tough on the players who are covering the kick and it makes an impact on field position.”
Asked if the organization was embarrassed by it, he said: “I just gave you my response.”
The sideshow stems from Beckham crawling on the ground like a dog and then lifting his leg in the back of the end zone following a touchdown catch in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s loss to the Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.
This may not be the first time McAdoo seemingly excused Beckham’s on-field behavior only to have his bosses do the dirty work for him. In 2015, when McAdoo was the team’s offensive coordinator, he condoned Beckham’s actions against then-Panthers cornerback Josh Norman, which eventually led to Beckham being suspended for one game by the NFL. McAdoo at the time of the incident said he liked Beckham “salty” and, just like this week, was more concerned with the 15-yard penalties than the behavior itself.
By the time McAdoo was interviewing with Mara for the vacant head coach job several weeks later, he had changed his perspective on it and said he believed he should have done more during that game from the sideline.
On Monday, Beckham hinted on social media that it might have been a politically motivated pantomime meant to reference President Trump calling players who kneel during the national anthem a “son of a (expletive).”
“I’m a dog so I acted like a dog,” he said after the game.
That context, if it was indeed the root of his fourlegged act, was lost on many who saw the celebration and found it troubling and in poor taste, and it has done little to defend it in the court of public opinion.
Or, we now know, “internal” opinion either.