He is a lightning rod, no question. He is an athlete who can stir a hundred different emotions watching him play, some good, some less so, and a lot in between. And the thing is: that’s OK. In our hot-take sporting world, in the moments after the Rams beat the 49ers for the NFC Championship, it was so simple to go to one of two corners, one of two extremes:
No. 1: Good for Odell Beckham Jr.! He sure showed the Giants!
No. 2: The hell with Odell Beckham Jr.! He hosed the Giants!
Here’s the thing, though: this doesn’t have to be a binary argument. You really can feel a lot of different things about Beckham latching on to the Rams in the middle of this year and now being a key reason why they will be playing a home game in Super Bowl 2022.
Yes. You can be angry if you want. You can revisit the trade that sent him away, and add that to the list of reasons why you won’t be sending Dave Gettleman a retirement gift. You can be mad at the whims of violence in the NFL, which sidelined him for half of his final 32 games as a Giant. And you can sure foster resentment toward Beckham, whose odd behavior and occasional me-first public commentary helped sour his time here — and in Cleveland, for that matter — and gave Gettleman plenty of reasons to deal him.
All of that is part of the record. And all of that is fair. But so is this:
When he was here, he was as breathtaking a player as we’ve seen in years. The very best of Beckham was the very best the position of wide receiver allows, and if you forget it’s all there on YouTube, the catch that made him famous, the one-handed (actually three-fingered) grab against the Cowboys, Brandon Carr all over him (and interfering with him) in the MetLife end zone.
“Put this to music!” Cris Collinsworth crowed on NBC that night.
It was just a taste of what Beckham would give the Giants, the acrobatics, the out-of-nowhere slants that became 70-yard touchdowns. He scored 44 of them in only 59 games as a Giant. He made three Pro Bowls his first three years as a Giant. Sometimes the Pro Bowl can be a hollow honor but if you saw Beckham in those years, and heard what MetLife sounded like whenever it realized Eli Manning was tossing the football Beckham’s way …
They were legit. And so was he.
So yes: you can be happy for Beckham AND retain some bitterness how it all wound up playing out for him here. You can balance the memories of his rare brilliance on the field with the headlines he made for things other than catching Manning’s spirals — and there were plenty — or the fact that Gettleman dealt him away a year after scoffing at the notion that he’d ever do such a thing.
Even in our world, such things are possible, aren’t they?
I don’t know of too many Mets fans who were aggrieved that Travis d’Arnaud won a championship with the Braves last year, six years after being a huge cog in the Mets’ push to the 2015 World Series. Most Rangers fans I know are delighted that Ryan McDonagh has won a couple of Cups in Tampa Bay after coming so close with Big Blue in ’14. Does any Knicks fan begrudge Bill Cartwright for the three titles he won with Michael Jordan’s Bulls, or David Lee for the ring he won with the Warriors?
“This is an amazing moment,” Beckham said after catching nine balls from Matt Stafford on Sunday night, gaining 113 yards, and showing a genuinely compassionate side by consoling 49ers star Deebo Samuel immediately afterward. “I didn’t ever think this would really be possible but everything about this place is right. The story could not be written any better for us.”
He smiled then. We’ve seen that smile here, after taking one to the house.
“We’re all one game away from our dreams,” he said.
If he gets to live that dream? Good for him. He’s 29 now. He’s about to be a father. He’s a player who people have opinions about, and he’s helped foster those opinions. You can feel good for him and bad for how things worked out for him here. It doesn’t have to be an either/or proposition.