NOBODY IN BLUE IS SAFE
Even OBJ at risk if GM is serious about overhaul
Jason Pierre-Paul’s startling Thursday trade could be just the beginning of a larger Giants overhaul that catches Odell Beckham Jr. in its wake.
Team president John Mara’s promise of “wholesale changes” seemingly hadn’t come to full fruition even in his coach/GM change from Ben McAdoo and Jerry Reese to Dave Gettleman and Pat Shurmur. But Thursday’s shipment of JPP to Tampa — which blindsided Pierre-Paul, according to a source — landed like a thunderbolt in East Rutherford and made clear this new regime isn’t screwing around.
The organization is heading in a new direction. The 2018 Giants will look far more different than anyone realized. And Pierre-Paul was one of this franchise’s faces and supposed untouchables, along with Beckham, Eli Manning and Landon Collins. So if JPP can be traded, who can’t? It may put everyone on the table.
And if that’s true, Beckham could be the next player dealt.
Now no one knows yet whether Gettleman intends to trade or re-sign Beckham, 25, who wants a mega-deal that matches his incredible talent. But by trading Pierre Paul, Gettleman has brought himself to a crossroads:
He is now at the juncture where he must decide to pay Odell — and he freed up cap space to do that with the JPP move — or trade him to a team that will.
Not because Beckham has all the leverage (the wide receiver lost some with the bad optics of that video from France a couple weeks back). But because this Pierre-Paul trade wasn’t just a football move about a bad fit in a 3-4 defense; it was a locker room move.
You can tell, as a former NFL executive said Thursday, by the discount of the trade price, basically receiving only a third-round pick in return for a guy who when healthy can be a dominant defensive end. (And now plenty of draft experts are saying N.C. State’s Bradley Chubb is worth the Giants’ No. 2 pick in the draft; see the disparity?) Pierre-Paul was a highly-paid, eight-year veteran without the clout or leadership skills to get guys in line in 2017 when the club crumbled on McAdoo. Mara’s edict is to erase that poisonous dynamic. This trade definitely has financial motivations but also certainly falls within that
theme.
The decision about Beckham is also about the culture, locker room and new direction of the franchise. It’s certainly not just about football. Because if it were, it’d be a no-brainer.
Beckham would get his extension the second Gettleman flicked on Instagram (I’m sure Dave loves Insta!) and watched OBJ firing out on routes as he trains this offseason, his broken left ankle clearly healed and strong. And he’d probably appreciate Brandon Marshall — still on the Giants’ roster as of Thursday night — playfully pumping up and challenging Beckham: “Bro you look AMAZING. Will you present me for Come Back player of the year?”
If Gettleman wants a team that can win right away with a 37-yearold Manning at quarterback, bringing Beckham back makes sense. And as one GM told me, the key with Beckham — for the Giants or any prospective NFL team trading for him — should be to surround him with a better support structure of positive influences and mentors.
This argument supports the idea that Gettleman and the Giants could re-sign Beckham, based on the work the GM has done so far: They are remaking a large part of the locker room to include fewer controversial personalities, so the culture around Beckham could be less volatile and therefore have a better chance of bringing out the best in him. (Though cutting Dwayne Harris removes the veteran leader of the Giants’ receivers’ room and creates a void).
But the question is: does Mara’s and Gettleman’s new direction for the Giants include tolerance for Beckham’s distractions and misgivings? Or have they decided enough is enough?
And consider, while Gettleman may hardball Beckham and tell him he has to play this season out on his fifth-year option, that’s dangerous for a couple reasons.
First, Beckham could hold out for the money he deserves, creating a distraction and taking the Giants’ best offensive weapon off the field. But second, Gettleman needs to decide if Beckham will be a part of the Giants’ long-term future because that decision impacts what the Giants should/will do with their No. 2 overall pick in April’s draft, too.
If the Giants were to trade Beckham, for example, they would have to draft a weapon like Penn State dynamo back Saquon Barkley to even make the case they had replaced some of Beckham’s game-breaking ability and that their offense is good enough for Manning to win big in the short-term.
But if they traded Beckham and drafted Chubb or a quarterback who wouldn’t even play in 2018? That would be a hard short-term sell, indeed.
Beckham certainly isn’t the only Giant possibly on notice after JPP’s trade out of town. If the Giants are disappointed in their leadership, especially on defense, then big names such as Damon Harrison could come into play.
But it all comes back to Beckham, because the decision on him is the biggest decision that faces the Giants this offseason, bigger even than the pick they make at No. 2 overall. We don’t know what will happen. All we know is Gettleman traded JPP for a thirdround pick on Thursday, and one thing that means for sure is that no one knows what he’ll do next.