PITTSBURGH — Before he began throwing a verbal flag on the officiating Sunday, Odell Beckham Jr. answered why he was smiling and clapping on the sidelines when his dynamic pal Antonio Brown caught a 22-yard touchdown pass in the Steelers’ 24-14 victory.
“I didn’t admire the points going on the board, but I admire him, so it’s a tough balance,” he said. “I would have liked for him to score next week and not this week, but the guy’s great. He’s one of the best in the league day in and day out. He came in today, he did his thing.”
There will be many, of course, who do not consider this a good optic.
“It is what it is, you can’t really sit there and worry about what everybody else has to say about something, or somebody’s mad because I smiled when he scored,” Beckham said. “It doesn’t really cross my mind. Like I said, the man’s like a brother to me, he’s taken me under his wing in the offseason, we go training, we do this … he’s just a good guy.
“And not like I’m sitting there rooting for him against our team, like, ‘Oh, man, tear it up.’ No, I don’t want us to lose! But at the end of the day, man, I love Antonio, I love the way he plays, I love everything about him, so … I do admire when he does his thing. Honest truth.”
Beckham (10 rec., 100 yards) also defended hanging out Saturday night with Brown (6 rec., 54 yards, 1 TD) and posting a head-bobbing rap video duet of sorts on Twitter.
“I got a chance to go see him and just spend some time with him,” Beckham said. “That’s like a brother to me. I love watching him play. I love watching him celebrate. I love seeing him just smile, have fun. It’s great. You want to be great and others who want to be great inspire you, and he’s a guy who inspired me, so it was cool to come here at Pittsburgh, and watch him do his thing. Unfortunately we lost, but hey, that’s the cookie crumbles.”
Beckham, though, was more concerned with the officiating.
“I don’t know, I don’t really think that we should have this crew anymore when the Giants are playing, with the past history and everything that’s going on,” he said.
Several members of Terry McAuley’s crew officiated the infamous Beckham-Josh Norman Carolina game last season and the same crew — minus McAuley — issued pregame warnings to Beckham and Norman prior to Giants-Redskins this season.
“I’m pretty sure this is the same crew from the Panthers game, the Redskins game, so just put two and two together,” Beckham said.
Ohell no.
“It’s ‘us against the world’ in a sense, you can’t sit there and rely on refs — obviously that’s not the case, you can’t sit there and rely on them, if anybody watched the game today,” Beckham said matter-of-factly.
“It’s not like I’m sitting here saying the refs are the reason we lost the game, but there’s plenty of calls in the game, and anybody can go watch the film. Anybody. Anybody can go watch the film and see exactly what was going on.”
Beckham was shocked when he was flagged for offensive interference against Ross Cockrell on the Giants’ second possession.
“I don’t pay attention to nonsense, it was a horrible call in my opinion, I don’t understand how I’m running down the field on a go route, and someone tried to stop my progress, but I can’t put my hands on them,” Beckham said. “It’s hard to stay composed when you know that there’s a lot of nonsense going on.
“I went up to ask him what was going on, what was the flag? And he said, ‘Get out of my face,’ ” Beckham said.
Beckham said that he had never heard anything like that from a zebra.
“I’m trying to turn over a new leaf, I’m trying to just play football the way I love playing football, and it’s hard,” Beckham said. “It almost feels like a disrespect thing. I’m trying to figure out what I did wrong, so I don’t do it again, and you’re gonna sit here and tell me, ‘Get out of my face.’ I don’t really understand that. That’s not really how I was raised or anything like that.
“Again, man, I don’t want to sit here and misquote and say that I’m saying the refs were the reason we lost the game, ’cause that’s clearly not the reason we lost the game, just to make that clear to everybody. They’re a very good team and they beat us today.”
Who did did he feel had a bigger impact on the game?
“That’s for you guys to figure out, I don’t really know the answer to that, but they got the win so, it is what it is,” Beckham said.