South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Beckham vs. Ramsey the featured matchup
NEW YORK — When Odell Beckham Jr. signed his contract extension last week, thereby guaranteeing he would play in the Giants’ season opener, Jacksonville Jaguars corner Jalen Ramsey, a friend of Beckham’s, tweeted some hype for Sunday’s Week 1 showdown:
“It’s going to be a show very soon #BatmanVsTheJoker,” Ramsey wrote.
Beckham is the Joker in that equation, an alter ego he adopted for Monday Night Football in Miami in 2015 that took on a life of its own.
“I think I’m just me,” Beckham told the Daily News Thursday. “I know that I already am — I already have been the villain, you know what I mean? So whatever has been built for me and what’s there is what it’s gonna be. I can’t really change — like Kobe (Bryant) was the villain and he played it and he embraced it. And it’s like for me, I had to just embrace whatever comes with it.”
Meanwhile, Beckham said he’s not so sure Ramsey is the hero. In OBJ’s mind, Ramsey is a villain, too.
“Jalen’s probably like Bane,” Beckham said with a laugh, referencing Batman’s nemesis from ‘The Dark Knight Rises.’ “Jalen’s more like Bane, because he’s coming to wreck it.”
Two villains, then, will be out to play hero Sunday at MetLife Stadium: Beckham in his first game action since he broke his left ankle on Oct. 8, 2017, is out to prove he hasn’t lost a step.
And Ramsey, a first-team AllPro, who needs to put his money where his mouth is after dissing Beckham’s quarterback, Eli Manning, in ‘GQ’ last month.
“I won’t say Eli’s good,” Ramsey said in a wide-ranging interview in which he also took shots at Ben Roethlisberger. “I’ll say Odell’s good. And their connection is good.”
Those are fighting words and only the beginning of the trash talk Ramsey will direct at OBJ. He will be out to ruin the debut of Pat Shurmur’s new Giants offense led by the potentially lethal combination of Beckham and No. 2 overall pick Saquon Barkley at running back.
Beckham, aware of the expectations that come with his new $90 million contract, said Wednesday that “I think I learned my lesson” on how to handle such adversity, alluding to his 2015 blow-up with then-Carolina Panthers corner Josh Norman.
That doesn’t mean, though, that OBJ is going to prepare less enthusiastically than he has in the past. He still will build up his adrenaline and energy on game day to perform at his best. He still will compete. He simply will be keenly cognizant, simultaneously, of not crossing the line — of not going full-Joker, so to speak.
The Joker alter-ego, as Beckham reminisces, derives from a Dec. 14, 2015 win in Miami on Monday Night Football when he played the Joker pregame to the Batman of his best friend, thenDolphins receiver Jarvis Landry. Beckham wore a helmet shield, gloves and cleats pre-game featuring the Joker’s likeness, and Landry’s cleats represented the caped hero.
The next week, though, when Beckham faced Norman, it wasn’t all fun and games.
“I’ve always loved the Joker,” Beckham said. “Like in the movie, ‘The Dark Knight?’ I love his character (played by the late Heath Ledger). He’s crazy. So we went down to Miami and we played a Monday night game against Jarvis and I wore the Joker stuff. And the next week we were playing the Panthers, and Josh was all the Batman, and then the whole thing started and it was Batman vs. Joker. So that’s really where it came from.
”I was never like, ‘I call myself the Joker,’ “Beckham added. ”It just was like I love him as a character, and then the name got attached to me.“
Beckham vs. Ramsey — or the Joker vs. Bane, that is — will be the featured matchup on Sunday amid a highly-anticipated game rife with storylines, including Tom Coughlin’s return as Jacksonville’s executive VP of football operations to oppose the Giants for the first time since he was fired as head coach after that 2015 season.
But the star receiver against the stud corner won’t necessarily define the winner and loser of the game, either.
Shurmur’s ability to establish the run with Barkley and a re- vamped offensive line probably will be the key. His incorporation of many weapons, including tight end Evan Engram, wideout Sterling Shepard, running back Wayne Gallman and offseason addition receiver Cody Latimer, could be an exciting change and improvement from the frustrating predictability of Ben McAdoo’s attack the past two years.
Beckham vs. Ramsey, however, most accurately reflects the magnitude of this game, the star power that will be on the field determining the outcome, and the volatility of pitting so many explosive personalities and players against each other.
Ramsey, for example, was suspended by Jacksonville for a week this preseason for tweets criticizing a reporter. Of course, his huge GQ story with him running his mouth about the entire league then dropped that week.
Beckham’s history of antics is well-known and nearly cost him his job with the Giants, but now he’s signed long-term and determined coming off the broken ankle to erupt back onto the NFL scene.
Ramsey was asked Thursday in Jacksonville if he thinks Beckham will let him get under his skin, as Ramsey did to Cincinnati Bengals star receiver A.J. Green last season, leading to a fight and double-ejection.
”I don’t know,“Ramsey said under his breath. ”I don’t know.“
Only one way to find: kick the ball off Sunday and let the two Super villains decide it themselves.