It’s Mann overboard
GREEN BAY – Odell Beckham will be receiving a bill in the mail from the Packers pretty soon. The captain of the Party Boat reportedly punched a hole in the wall down the hall from the Giants locker room in frustration after he was a complete dud in the first playoff game of his career.
He did even more damage to what might have been Eli Manning’s best chance to win his third Super Bowl ring and there is no way to put a dollar figure on that at all.
“You got to keep working, and hopefully, you get more opportunities,” Manning said. “I plan on being back here next year.”
Beckham dropped an easy third-down pass to end the Giants’ first possession and then he and his Party Boat buddy Sterling Shepard each dropped touchdown passes on the second possession.
Beckham and Shepard let Manning down, but so did an atrocious day by the special teams. And what about the defense? It had been so good for four months, but finally cracked under the pressure put on the unit by Aaron Rodgers, who threw four TD passes, including an inexcusable Hail Mary touchdown heave on the final play of the first half.
Manning turned 36 last week. He did not have a great season even as the Giants won 11 games, their most since 2008. The $200 million upgrade improved the defense, but the offense didn’t even average 20 points per game. The Giants have a lot of core players who are just hitting the prime years of their careers, but nothing can be taken for granted in the NFL.
There is no guarantee the Giants will make the playoffs next year. That’s why the 38-13 loss to the Packers — the Giants were outscored 24-0 in the last 18 minutes — was such a wasted opportunity. The Giants have already thrown away too many of Manning’s prime years and he doesn’t have that many left.
The receivers’ commitment was questioned with the Miami trip, and then they tried to make a statement hours before the game by coming out shirtless on the field. The game-time temperature was 14 with a wind chill of 2. Beckham was the first one out on the field without a shirt. Cruz and the others followed.
“Just proving that we were above the cold. Just kind of going out there and feeling it and not letting it be a factor for us. That was just kind of us playing a mental game with ourselves,” Cruz said. “It was freezing,” Beckham said. Maybe they got confused and were shirtless because they thought they were still on the boat. Beckham played as if his mind was in Miami, partying until the sun came up with Justin Bieber less than a week before the biggest game of his life.
Manning played well enough to keep the Giants’ season going. In fact, early on, every pass he threw was sharp and catchable. But Beckham didn’t help him when the Giants had an opportunity to take control of the game early. They did get up 6-0, but it should have been a lot more.
“I don’t know if he struggled,” Manning said. “I guess we’re used to him making unbelievable catches. He didn’t come down with some of those tough catches. This game doesn’t come down on him. It comes down on the whole offense.”
Rodgers got even with the Giants for the Hail Mary that Manning completed at the end of the first half of the divisional playoff game at Lambeau five years ago. Rodgers also completed two Hail Marys during the 2015 season, including one against Arizona in the playoffs in a game the Packers lost in overtime. Rodgers also frustrated the Giants’ defense by continually sidestepping the rush in the second half and buying crucial seconds to allow his receivers to get open. In the first half, he was the one frustrated.
But the Hail Mary changed the game and gave the Packers a 14-6 lead. Randall Cobb, who was supposed to be boxing out, instead got behind Eli Apple, Landon Collins and Leon Hall and Rodgers’ moonshot came floating softly into his hands in the back of the end zone.
After the Giants cashed in on a short field with Manning’s 41-yard TD to Tavarres King to get back to 14-13, the Packers scored 24 consecutive points.
This week and this game will be remembered for the trip Beckham, Cruz, Shepard and Roger Lewis made to Miami and what impact it had on the disappointing performances by OBJ and Shepard – who had another drop two plays before his TD drop.
Beckham insisted there was no connection between his mini-vacation and horrendous game, but the optics and his stats were bad. Manning targeted him 11 times and they connected just four times for 28 yards.
Players party more than we will ever know or want to know. Social media exposed Beckham and the others. One former Giant told me a story last week about how he and 10-12 teammates regularly went to a Manhattan club on Friday nights and didn’t leave until it closed at 6 a.m.
Instead of going home, where they feared falling asleep, they drove right to the parking lot at the Giants facility and slept in their cars. They had one of the Giants ball boys come out and wake them up before practice and meetings. Did it happen in the playoffs, I asked? “It didn’t matter what time of the year it was,” he said.
He saw nothing wrong with what Beckham did last week. But at this time of the year, it’s important to know all 53 guys on the roster are focused on one thing: Winning. Beckham left himself wide open to being criticized. e partied in Miami and then played the worst game of his career when Manning needed him most. Beckham refused to acknowledge one thing had anything to do with the
Hother. “The connection is just not there in my opinion,” Beckham said. “But everybody can have their own opinion.”
The Giants just wasted another year of Manning’s career. That is my opinion.