Giants’ receivers coach: We love Odell Beckham as a player and a person

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Whatever the reasons for the Giants’ surprising decision to trade Odell Beckham, it wasn’t that his position coach didn’t want to keep coaching him.

Giants receivers coach Tyke Tolbert declined to get into the specifics of the trade but made clear that he’s a fan of Beckham’s.

“That’s just the business of football,” Tolbert said, via the New York Daily News. “We all love Odell as a player in this organization and as a person, but Coach Shurmur and Dave Gettleman have talked to you guys about that situation. So we just wish Odell the best, and respectfully I want to talk about the players we have on our team.”

But typically, when a team cites “the business of football” as the reason to get rid of a good player, it’s an aging player who still has some value but is no longer worth what his contract pays him. The Giants traded Beckham just months after signing him to a five-year, $95 million contract — a contract that Gettleman said repeatedly was intended to keep Beckham in New York, not to facilitate a trade.

Tolbert may love Beckham, but Gettleman and Shurmur seem to have soured on him quickly after signing him to that big contract. And the Giants still haven’t adequately explained why.