Would the Giants trade Odell Beckham? Stranger things have happened, and team president John Mara at the owner’s meetings concedes it’s possible.
“We’re certainly not shopping him,” Mara said at the owners’ meeting in Orlando. “But when you’re coming off a season where you’re 3-13 and played as poorly as we played, click here.I wouldn’t say anyone’s untouchable.”
Sounds like while Mara isn’t actively trying to make a deal, he would be willing to listen to offers. New York, of course, moved Jason Pierre-Paul last week.
Beckham is immensely talented, but he’s embarrassed the team with a series of off-field incidents. On an off day during the week before a playoff game at Green Bay, Beckham and some teammates headed to Miami to party with Justin Bieber on a yacht. Last week, a video surfaced showing Beckham and a woman in bed with a pizza and what might have been be drugs. I watched it a couple of times and didn’t notice anything, but others have slowed it down and done screen captures indicating that Beckham might be holding a marijuana blunt, and that there seems to be lines of white powder nearby.
Whether true or not, it wasn’t a good look.
“I think too often he allows himself to get put in bad situations and he needs to use a little better judgment,” Mara said. “I don’t know what was in that video exactly, but I’m tired of answering questions about Odell’s behavior and what the latest incident is. I think he knows what’s expected of him, and now it’s up to him.”
Beckham is entering the final year of his rookie contract, and that turns up the heat. He said last summer that he wanted to become the highest-paid player (at any position) in the league. An NFL Network report suggests he won’t show up at any practices without a new deal. At a minimum, that would involve making him at least the highest-paid wide receiver in the league.
The Giants, on their side, probably are nervous about tying up too much money in a player who’s been involved in a lot of off-field incidents. Is he going to practice hard and work to be the best in the game? And is there any chance he’ll at some point run afoul of the league’s policies against substance abuse – maybe serving a suspension at some point.
Beckham has been in the league for four years, and I notice that almost all of his numbers have gotten worse every year.
His drop rate keeps increasing. When he was a rookie he was catching touchdown bombs with three fingers. Last year he dropped 4 passes despite missing 12 games.
His yards per pass play (yards per target) has declined every year. He’s averaged fewer catches and yards per game every year. And his fantasy production (per game) has gone down every year.
| BECKHAM'S DROP RATE | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Rec | Drop | Pct |
| 2014 | 91 | 2 | 2.2% |
| 2015 | 96 | 5 | 5.0% |
| 2016 | 101 | 6 | 5.6% |
| 2017 | 25 | 4 | 13.8% |
| BECKHAM, YARDS PER PASS PLAY | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Tgt | Rec | Yards | Avg |
| 2014 | 132 | 91 | 1,305 | 9.9 |
| 2015 | 158 | 96 | 1,450 | 9.2 |
| 2016 | 169 | 101 | 1,367 | 8.1 |
| 2017 | 41 | 25 | 302 | 7.4 |
| BECKHAM, FANTASY POINTS PER START | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | St | Rec | Yds | TD | Pts |
| 2014 | 11 | 7.9 | 118 | 1.00 | 17.8 |
| 2015 | 15 | 6.4 | 97 | .87 | 14.9 |
| 2016 | 16 | 6.3 | 85 | .63 | 12.4 |
| 2017 | 4 | 6.3 | 76 | .75 | 12.3 |
(Note on this last chart that I’m showing per-start numbers. Beckham in 2014 played in 12 games. In his first game his rookie year, he came off the bench and played in a part-time role. I am showing only the 11 games where he was a starter an integral part of the offense.)
Beckham is a great talent – maybe the best wide receiver in the league. But for whatever reasons, he hasn’t been quite as effective in recent seasons, and that might help create a larger gap between how the Giants value him and what he thinks of himself. With New York having a ton of other holes on its roster, I believe it would seriously listen if a team were to come along with a reasonable offer.
Dave Gettleman is the general manager in New York now, recall. When he was in Carolina, he was willing to walk away from Josh Norman (pulling the franchise tag) when he thought he wasn’t going to be able to agree on the correct value with the player.
—Ian Allan