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- Mar 19, 2019
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From the moment ESPN televised that bizarre interview with then-Giants receiver Odell Beckham Jr. and, for reasons still neither known nor apparent, Lil Wayne, it was obvious that Beckham wanted out of New York. And Beckham confirmed during his newly-published interview with GQ that, indeed, it was time to go.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Beckham tells GQ regarding his mindset during his final year with the Giants. “I just can’t do it. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t in a good place. And like I told you earlier, I feel like everything is about happiness, and I just was not.”
Beckham’s discontent manifested itself in ways other than that ESPN interview, with Beckham openly questioning why the Giants had signed him to a long-term deal.
“I really felt like: Why did we even sign this contract?” Beckham says. “What did we sign this for? That’s what I felt during the season. Why did we do this deal to not feel long-term, because I don’t feel like y’all are still wanting me to be here long-term during the season. I could feel it during the season. I would be up and down the sidelines saying that, like, ‘Why did you sign me?’ I could’ve just not did this at all.”
But he did it, taking the $20 million signing bonus that came with it. And then within weeks after the ink dried, he wanted out. When Beckham got what he wanted — a one-way ticket out of New York — he still wasn’t entirely happy.
“My initial reaction was not disappointment,” Beckham says. “I felt disrespected. Like, after everything I’ve done for them. This is me being honest: This team has not been good for the last six years. Period. Even the year we went to the playoffs and everyone was talking about this and that. And we went there, and I didn’t have a great playoff game. Don’t get me wrong, I had a terrible game. But I left the game with seven targets, and I’m supposed to be your number one receiver. I left the game with seven targets. We lost. They scored 40 points. It’s just all bad. I felt disrespected, because I felt like I was a main reason at keeping that brand alive. They were getting prime-time games, still, as a 5-and-11 team. Why? Because people want to see the show. You want to see me play. That’s just real rap. I’m not sitting here like, ‘It’s because of me.’ But let’s just be real. That’s why we’re still getting prime-time games. I felt disrespected they weren’t even man enough to even sit me down to my face and tell me what’s going on.”
But, again, he wanted out. And it’s fair to think that the Giants already felt disrespected by Beckham, given the tone and content of his Lil Wayne sidecar interview, during which Beckham took a shot at quarterback Eli Manning and called the basic yes-or-no proposition of whether he’s happy in New York a “tough question.”
It’s not a tough question as to whether he was happy. He wasn’t. And it’s also not a tough question as to who he felt disrespected by. But his answer was a little convoluted.
“The G.M.,” Beckham initially says, regarding the source of the disrespect. “And I’ll forever have respect for [Giants president and CEO John] Mara. Everything he’s ever done for me, he’s shown nothing but love. Even when we were having our talks, it was coming from a place of love. I could always feel it. So I’ll forever have respect for him. But then to be called like that [by G.M. Dave Gettleman] and then be texted by your coach and be like, ‘Oh, yeah, I heard the news.’ Yeah, you heard the news? It happened because of you. The reason I’m gone is because of you. It was just tough because of the way I initially felt. On the other side of it, I was excited about a new start because I had been — honestly, I had been praying to God the season before this season for a change.”
So he felt disrespected by Gettleman, and possibly a little bit by coach Pat Shurmur. And Beckham thinks he was gone “because of” Gettleman and/or Shurmur, even though Beckham makes it clear that he wanted out.
Beckham’s decision to give John Mara a pass seems odd, and misinfored. It reflects a basic misunderstanding that, ultimately on matters of this nature, Mara calls the shots. And if the Giants decided to trade Beckham to another team without saying a word about it to Beckham before doing it, that’s a decision that necessarily carries Mara’s fingerprints.
In the end, Beckham got what he wanted. Apparently, he didn’t get it precisely the way he wanted it. Or maybe he just was so upset with the Giants that nothing the Giants said or did would have kept him from finding something to complain about on the way out the door. Or, in this case, weeks or months after he exited.