Odell Beckham Did Not Save The Browns
This gonna be a long one so strap in.
OBJ has had a really fascinating career so far. Looking at him now, it’s easy to forget where we once were with him. He’s 29, could possibly still have a career resurgence ahead of him on whatever team he ends up on, adding an entire new fascinating chapter to his story. I want to take a moment to relive the OBJ story up to this point.
Beckham’s first appearance on this site was his draft card. I didn’t know who he was. I was mad we drafted a wide receiver. He was the 3rd WR drafted behind Sammy Watkins (yikes!) and Mike Evans (good!). We had Cruz and Nicks, WR didn’t feel like a massive need. He missed the first few games of the season with a hamstring problem and even at the time I remember Giants fan spaces were getting mad about us potentially picking another bust.
Then he came in against the Falcons and caught a sick touchdown and all was forgiven. We immediately knew this guy was different. He put up great performances in the next two games and he quickly became a new favorite. That’s when the Cowboys game happened.
With one play Odell went from a cool rookie to watch to one of the most popular players in the league. I still think that catch might be the best catch I’ve ever seen. Not the greatest catch, it was a 2nd quarter touchdown in a midseason loss, but the best catch I’ve ever seen someone make. I think a lot of people have let the aftermath and the hype of that moment cloud their memory of that catch. I encourage you to go back and watch it again and just…admire it.
A lot of people, reacting to spite the media fawning to it, have nitpicked the catch, saying that oh well he had sticky gloves on or oh well other players have made similarly great one handed grabs. One, everyone wears the same sticky gloves, so shut up, comes with the job. Two, yeah, other players have made catches like that, and good for them. What still sets the OBJ catch apart for me, which nobody ever brings up, is that he made this leaping 3 finger snag catch off-balance after being held and interfered with. Not ticky-tack interference, straight up DPI. The Giants would have gotten the ball inside the five on the penalty. In fact I remember being so pumped about the obvious penalty that I had the same reaction Collinsworth did: I didn’t realize he caught it at first. I thought he got pulled and fell over. I could not fathom he caught that ball. To this day, watching the full-speed replay, I still can’t. That catch deserves the respect it got.
But I understand why people turned on him after that. Even at the time I saw the divide happen. Whenever something is insanely popular, even if it is by all metrics impressive and good, a large subset of people will react in spite of it. I don’t disagree with how tiring the hype was. The catch was a legitimate phenomenon. The Giants lost that game and somehow won it at the same time. Collinsworth himself is probably a significant cause of the backlash; to this day he still mentions OBJ whenever a player makes a one-handed grab. It’s obnoxious.
It put all the spotlight on a guy who clearly enjoyed the attention but at the time I didn’t care. Dude was a star. We had a star setting rookie records on a hall of fame track. He made several outstanding grabs as the season went on and going into 2015 he was absolutely the brightest star the Giants have seen in the past decade, even bigger than Victor Cruz was. The hype, and the irritated people who react in kind, was immense.
Year two ended up being the vindication year for the haters. After another outstanding season, the Panthers game happened. Hints of Beckham’s tendency for drama had come out the previous year against the Rams, where the Jeff Fisher team clearly targeted him and caused a massive fight to break out. Nobody was mad at Beckham for his involvement because he had clearly been fouled and targeted by an asshole Rams squad, but it offered hints of his temper that would come to everyone’s attention the following year..
The Panthers Josh Norman, who was having an all-pro year and delighted in being a pest, broke Beckham somehow. The two of them ended up in several scuffles before the ultimate moment where Beckham, after a play was over, ran and speared Norman with his helmet, causing a ruckus. It was a total bitch move and he should have been ejected, suspended, and fined immediately. Norman should have honestly been the same because he played no small part in being a huge dick himself, but Beckham bore the brunt because he committed the worst act and had the farthest to fall. People already knew Norman was a dick.
Beckham’s reputation immediately changed again. He wasn’t cool anymore. He was a talented asshole douche canoe. Any previous moment of drama or temper immediately got thrown in his face and he got the dreaded DIVA label. Fairly, I have to admit. But from that point on, his play on the field didn’t matter to the public anymore. What mattered was his drama.
His next few seasons in NY are mostly characterized by continuing to play exceptionally well, then injuries, and the fucking kicking net saga, which is still nonsense. Players throw tantrums and express frustration on the sidelines every game, Beckham simply hit the net passing by in anger and the net bounced back to hit him in the head. Yet I saw people acting like this, which was honestly just funny, just another example of what a bad person he was. The media was just always on him and he wore his emotions on his sleeve so everything was so much worse than it actually was. His teammates loved him. He turned the kicking net thing into a running gag, owning it and pissing off the haters even more, and I still love him for how he did that. Him proposing to the net was my favorite moment of the year.
The boat saga came next, which did not work in his favor. The boat thing was also nonsense, but if Beckham and the other receivers had played well in the Green Bay game, it would have gone away instead of becoming Stupid Football Lore. If you act dumb, gotta make peope forget.
His next few years were just injuries after injuries. Then Gettleman paid him and you know what? I was happy with that. He might not have been the same guy, but he was still good, still had good chemistry with Eli, and was still like the only blue chip player the Giants had. Despite the drama I liked having him and the sheer lack of talent since the trade seems even worse in retrospect. The Giants traded Beckham, broke my heart, and have been even worse since it happened.
Gettleman got roasted for the trade at the time but in hindsight it was still one of his best moves. Looking back years later, I would have still preferred to keep him and he’d be great for Jones but I can’t deny we got some worth from that trade. Peppers is a great safety. Sexy Dexy is a great defensive lineman. Oshane Ximines…exists. The Browns got…a guy who spent a lot of time injured and someone who apparently made the team worse.
I hated the “Baker is better without OBJ” narrative but at this point it’s hard to deny there’s something to it. Even this past weekend Baker looked so much better. After all the hype and celebration with Browns fans after the trade, here we sit 2 seasons later and OBJ is a free agent. They didn’t even trade him. They just dumped him. And it came right after a ton of drama, which he had mostly appeared to avoid as a Brown until this past week or so. Maybe it was always happening internally, maybe it wasn’t. We don’t know.
I actually will go against the grain and say the Browns got something out of him. OBJ had a knack for single-handedly winning games for the Giants’ struggling offense. He did that against the Cowboys for the Browns in 2020. The Browns would finish 11-5, barely making the playoffs for the first time in almost 20 years. If Beckham doesn’t win that game, the Dolphins probably steal that final playoff spot from the Browns. He may have saved the Browns season by winning that game.
OBJ has gone from a stud young star to the biggest name in football. He’s gone from the biggest name in football to a diva piece of shit star. He’s gone from a diva piece of shit star to just a has-been on an offensive focused team that is better without it’s supposed best plater. Now he has a chance to make a difference somewhere else. I’m curious if he’ll ring chase or go somewhere else he wants to be.
He won’t come back home, but if he wanted to come back to New York, I’d welcome him. On a short leash with low tolerance for his drama, but I’d be okay with it.
EDIT: Lmao he’s a Ram, of course he’s a Ram, Les Snead gives no fucks. If he plays nice this is a great spot but this could explode very badly hahaha
I can never forgive Gettleman for that trade. You let Landon walk, then act like youre filling a hole by drafting this safety. Basically what we got was a DT, one of very few positions Gettleman drafts well anyway and we didnt need to spend a high pick on.
The 2016 season the Giants went 11-5 with a very good defence and an offence that consisted of “throw it to Odell on a slant and hope for the best”. He was our entire offence. He should have won the MVP award that season imo.
Despite what has happened at the Browns, I can’t help but wonder if he would have just been better off in NY. Yeah he had his moments, but he was all in on winning with the team. He was not a bad teammate. These past couple of weeks it seems he has been one on the Browns.
Giants have been trash for years now, but I can pinpoint the moment I lost my enthusiasm for the Giants on when this trade happened. I used to get up at 3am on a Monday morning to watch them, but now all the love I had for them is gone. I cant even pull for Gettleman to be fired, because John Mara is a stupid old man who will just make more stupid old man decisions anyway, and nothing will bring back Odell. Ive never had a player I loved watching more than Odell, and it ended so sourly in NY that Im not sure Ill ever invest like that again.
Sorry for the rant/emotional dump, but this is a sore point for me.
While I want to see Gettleman (and Judge and Garrett) let go after the season, you make a great point that Mara can’t be trusted to choose wisely. Isn’t the rumor that only Tisch putting his foot down was the only think keeping Mara from making his son GM after Reese was let go? Go to any Giants blog and old timers will point out that George Young was forced on the Maras by the NFL that was getting nervous about its main team in the biggest market going through an extended slump over the late 60’s and heading into the 80’s.
Also a short (in a “as the crow flies” sense at least) distance east the Mets show another example of why to temper your expectations that any changes in regime will magically solve everything.
Yeah the longer this goes on the more depressed I’m getting because Mara is a huge part of the problem but he can’t get fired.
And isn’t Mara the driving force behind the taunting penalty nonsense this season? I’d say the whole league would be better off without this guy
The one thing that annoyed the hell out of me from the OBJ hype was that after that catch his name needed to be brought up whenever someone made a one-handed grab, as if he was the pioneer who invented them. I certainly understand some of the reasons that made his catch notorious: it was during primetime, against a division rival, and it resulted on a touchdown. A memorable play for sure, but to me it was a bit blown out of proportion.
On a side note, the last panel left me wanting a Progressive ad revolving around that scene. Not gonna happen, but one can dream.
I think may favorite part of this comic is Jabril Peppers just sorta… existing in the fifth panel.
Mine is tied between OBJ’s hair sloping down from being held sideways and the Giants fan in the background
dpd is that you in the background committing hara kiri
Josh Norman really broke my dude in a single game. Amazing.
*DEEP BREATH*
I’m not sure I like your continued painting of people who called OBJ for what he is – a me-first selfish team cancer – being “the haters.” It falls in a ballpark very close to Aaron Rodgers calling everyone who called him out on his own bull#$# “the woke mob.”
And I strongly disagree with you on this: “From that point on, his play on the field didn’t matter to the public anymore. What mattered was his drama.”
Dude. Duuude. DUUUUDE. Eli’s #s without OBJ on the field WERE BETTER than they were with him on the field. His stats with his other WRs were better. If you’re going to revisit history and say the Browns lose to the Dolphins and don’t make the playoffs last year without him, let me add this. Without him vs Green Bay in 2015, Giants WIN. Eli ends up with a better postseason record than Rodgers in his own stadium, and who knows where they’d go from there.
OBJ played like !#% in that game. A game we should have won. But Sir MeFirst Dropsalot was there. Everyone remembers the boat trip and the loss, but they rarely recall him arguably costing us the game with drops and then punching a hole in the wall of the locker room like a petulant child.
So, no, Dave, I will push back on this idea that “the haters” didn’t care about what he did on the field. He made Eli WORSE following the loss to GB. He was a constant drain, he never fought for contested catches if he was going to get hit, and it was all me-first drama drama drama. Cocaine, hookers, trashing his QB in public, etc.
Everything that happened in Cleveland is just an extension of what happened in NY. Now, is it POSSIBLE for him to have a come-to-Jesus moment and turn his career around, like Moss did with NE? Sure. I won’t rule it out, but I have seen NOTHING from this jack#$@ to make me think he’s capable of it.
The second he decided that his own health, the safety of another player, and his own team’s chances for victory were second to getting back at Norman and having the last word by collapsing his skull in? That’s the second he betrayed me, as a fan, irrevocably. What if he jammed his neck and missed the rest of the season? What if he seriously injured Norman?
You take this “We’ll take you back” bull#% somewhere else. If the Giants even THINK about taking him back – and trust me, they won’t – I would stop following them as a fan.
This guy was demonstrably cancer on the field, off the field, and on top of that, which he can’t control, he is made of glass. He has injured almost everything at this point, and he went from being a monster talent to a pretty good talent – sometimes. The only reason he gets so much separation is because other teams stopped viewing him as a credible threat.
I’d like to say I called this two years ago, but honestly, that’s like saying I called the sun was going to be yellow today. The writing has been on the wall. But “the fanatical mob that worships OBJ” doesn’t care about that. They only care about the theatrics of his potential for neat catches.
This post is a bit aggressive on Dave, but it’s true that Eli’s numbers were better without OBJ. He really tried to force the ball to him too often. I have wondered how much was due to what OBJ could do when he did get the ball in open space vs him asking Eli for more targets.
I was mildly aware of that as I was typing, and debated putting a footnote that I didn’t intend to crank the hate to 11, lol. My writing process is pour all the emotion out, then craft it into a shorter, coherent reply and remove the emotion wherever possible. I didn’t have the time today, so I fired it off half-wincing. I won’t say I’m sorry, but I take “full responsibility” for my words if Dave “perceives” this to be a damaging attack on his person.
It just felt like an Aaron Rodgers response on Dave’s part, deflecting everything off of OBJ being the architect of his own demise, even as he begrudgingly admits his parts in it. It comes off like, “You haters drove him from NY, and maybe it would have worked, but YOU HATERS ruined it.” Do a find-replace for “haters” >> “woke mob,” and it almost sounds like Rodgers wrote it himself. That sort of ‘tude grinds my gears, but yea, I readily acknowledge I could have said it all more politely. My bad. Thank you for calling me out on it. Seriously. =)
“You haters drove him from NY, and maybe it would have worked, but YOU HATERS ruined it.”
I’ve reread my post like 4 times and I’m still unsure how you got this out of it. I never suggested anything like this. unless you interpreted my use of the word to only reference Giants fans who didn’t like him? That wasn’t the case. I was referring to the entire NFL fandom at large, not folks directly like you, Giants fans who weren’t fond of him.
Also I used the word haters twice. Twice! Out of 1562 words.
This is probably a bit harsh but I agree with the premise. Blaming “the drama” does sort of feel like a Rodgers discount double checkdown.
Man you need to like, get over OBJ. You talk like he killed your dog any time I make a comic with him. Maybe painting people who were annoyed by him with a broad term like “haters” was a poor word choice on my part but I feel exceptionally valid calling you one. You never miss an opportunity to call him a cancer and talk about how happy you were the Giants traded him. You hate his bad qualities and downplay his good ones, and twist stuff that wasn’t even really his fault into his fault. Even on a post mostly dedicated to just looking back at his complicated legacy thus far. You are the prototypical OBJ hater.
Hate the guy all you want, I don’t particularly like him as a person and as a player he appears to be mostly toast now, but if you can’t admit that a significant portion of that hate, especially pre-Carolina, wasn’t in significant part due to overexposure and not necessarily the guy himself, I don’t know what to tell you. A lot of your post reads like hindsight. I was there too. He never felt like he wasn’t worth the fairly mild drama…until Carolina. That game changed everything the same way the Cowboys game made him. That’s the game that made it reasonable and not irrational to hate him and everyone tired of the hype gladly jumped on that boat and for the next several years it felt like his drama was the only thing people wanted to talk about. Even made a comic about that. Dude was a media magnet. Plenty of that was his own fault and his actions, but not all of it, not by a long shot.
I also disagree we win the GB game without him. The whole offense outside Eli was bad that game, but they were keeping it close until DRC got hurt. Once that happened Rodgers started picking apart the defense. That injury affected the game more than anything else. That entire season was the offense underperforming and the defense saving our ass. Remove Beckham and I don’t buy the offense is suddenly good, or good enough to just consider that game an auto win.
Oh, I’m totally a hater, 100%. I won’t deny that. It just feels like every time you make a comic about OBJ, you are full-on fanboi in rose-colored glasses. In the same breath that you say trading him was possibly Gettleman’s best move, you’re pondering a world in which we kept him, or bring him back. You are constantly minimizing his shortcomings in all of this, and that kind of annoys me, if you haven’t noticed already. LOL.
I will certainly acknowledge that he is a polarizing figure in football. Not quite as polarizing as Timmy Bible Study or Colin TheNFLCutYourKneeCapOffForKneelingernick, but yea, the catch was covered to death and the general NFL-watching populace may have become irked by the focus on it.
But that’s NOT what you’re saying. Your phrasing in multiple places implies – and often states – the hater mob damaged OBJ’s image, which LED to his downfall. Now, I was an English major in college (you’d never know it by my short’n’sweet comments, bahahah), so it’s possible I just place more emphasis on your wording than you do. But at the very minimum, you’re not coming off OBJectively. Which is fine, for an opinion piece, but you’re trying to give a retrospective of his career. And in a situation like that, you probably want to stop dry-humping OBJ’s leg while you’re giving it. (BAHAHAHA!)
“Plenty of that was his own fault and his actions, but not all of it, not by a long shot.”
Perfect example of the rose-colored glasses. Intentional or not, you lead with acknowledging it’s partially his fault, but then *immediately* cut that off by defending it. You do this above, over and over and over red rover. It’s ok to say something like: “Plenty of that was his own fault, his own actions.” Fully acknowledge the actions he has taken that have placed him where he is. If you feel STRONGLY in mentioning the crowd, you could then say, “But I also feel like the public didn’t do him any favors by crucifying him for it and not giving him the chance to grow and learn from his mistakes.”
For my part, OBJ had a lot of good moments as a Giant; I won’t take that away from him. I didn’t hate him until his actions in the Carolina game showed me who he WAS and what he was about. HIS actions. The injuries in the following years are where we could see that the Giants were also statistically better without him on the field and that he made Eli worse.
I’m not sure how any of my post could read like hindsight, when EVERYTHING I said above is what I’ve been saying for years. You can check the comic where your dog eats your OBJ socks. I still occasionally go back and update my comments because I am a petty vindictive man. XD I haven’t changed my tune. Since the moment he decided spearing someone was a good idea, I picked up this drum and started banging on it. Calling out his QB publicly and the like is just showing that he never learned a thing from the original sin.
As for the GB game, I actually don’t think it’s an automatic win for NYG without OBJ, because I don’t know how it would have played out – nobody does. I only brought it up because if you’re going to be revisionist and assign the Browns a win vs the Dolphins because of him, then I get to do the same for the Giants without him. It’s impossible to say what would have happened if he wasn’t playing. “Take Phil Simms out of the 1990 Super Bowl and the Giants lose the game!” Oh, wait, Hostetler stepped up and they won. “Without Carson Wentz, NO WAY the Eagles beat the Patriots!” Oh, wait, Nick Foles stepped up and they won. Football is a fabric, and you never know what happens when you move an individual thread around.
You are missing the explicit difference between the Green Bay Game and the Browns game. The Browns game was very much an explicit win BECAUSE OBJ made a play when the Browns were on their last leg. Without that play, the chances the Browns win are almost zero. It’s the same thing with the Ravens game that OBJ won for us on 4th down with no time left. Without him doing OBJ things the Giants lose. The GB game was more muddled. The Browns/Ravens games are not revisionist history, he explicitly won those games directly and without that win the Browns lose the tiebreakers to Miami. You’re just engaging in fan fiction about how glorious the Giants would be if the guy you hated wasn’t there.
If you are self aware enough to recognize yourself as a hater, don’t go around accusing people less mean to him than you of being a rose colored fanboy. Doesn’t help your case. The entire post was about his complicated legacy, good and bad, and I was trying to view it from a distance for the most part.
There’s no difference. Without him on the field, someone ELSE is playing that position. You can’t just cherry pick which plays make a difference and which don’t, lol. It doesn’t work like that. If he missed any of those games, EVERYTHING changes. Maybe the Browns go up by 10 and don’t need last second heroics. The DRC injury play wouldn’t have happened the way it did, so maybe he doesn’t get injured. Maybe Rodgers does. Sliding Doors, the Butterfly Effect, call it what you will… you’re trying to bend the rules of time and space to make your case, and you can’t cherry pick history like that.
I’ll absolutely accuse you of being a fanboi in rose-colored glasses when it is very much apparent you are being one. I am willing to admit he was a supreme talent and that not every little thing was 100% his fault. I liked him up to the Carolina game. But he was 100% behind the wheel of his own ruination.
Almost every single acquiescence you have made to his problems is coupled with some sort of “Yea, but…”. No. Don’t say you’re painting the good and bad of his complicated legacy when you left out most of the bad or glossed over it as being caused by haters and the media. You didn’t mention him bashing Eli, pretending to urinate like a dog, how both Eli and Baker were statistically worse when he was on the field, or any of the mostly indefensible things he did to get kicked off the team. To you, he was just a guy who “wore his emotions on his sleeve.” That’s a 100% biased view of a player you loved. And that’s OK, as long as you can admit that it’s what you’re doing.
I had already written like 1500 words, I wasn’t going to sit there labeling every single thing he did good or bad, especially when I’ve made comics about it over the years already. I touched on the parts I thought were most important. The Catch and the Panthers game, which I feel are the two most defining moments of his career. One good, one bad, and the way the media made everything from those points on much worse. That was my goal, that’s what I did, and sorry if it didn’t play enough into your bloodlust against the dude and sit here labeling every misdeed he ever did. I don’t care how much you hate him and think he was the entire cause of his own downfall, because I just straight up disagree, and I don’t think it’s rose glasses to disagree with the statement “But he was 100% behind the wheel of his own ruination.”
For everything wrong he did, the media made it worse. There are countless examples of other players doing similar shit like Odell (Remember Andre Johnson beating up Cortland Finnegan?) and not getting the same level of hate and malice for it (remember Gronk’s dirty hit on that Bill? Brady’s constant tantrums?).
Part of his downfall and why we ditched him is also due to injuries, and I refuse to place the blame for football injuries at the player’s feet.
Also I did mention that the Browns seemed better without him even after I first thought that theory was wrong. I literally admitted fault there. Pay attention.
Out of everyone I’ve seen who hates Odell, and I’ve seen a lot and I don’t even disagree with a lot of it, you are consistently the angriest and worst. Your hate for the guy is fucking wild.
Also lol at asking me to admit bias. It’s my site. My work. Everything here except the comments is my bias by default. I don’t have to spell it out for anyone. But if you want to throw out the stupid bias card, take a second to admit your own against the guy, and maybe we can move on.
Listing out every single thing isn’t so much what I was referring to, so much as you glossing over the parts that paint him in the worst light.
So here’s where we stand. You think I’m blindly bloodlusting for the guy; I don’t think I am. I think you’re blindly excusing most of what he did wrong; you don’t think you are. It seems we are at an impasse. I’m fine with that.
Just a few add’l clarifications for the purpose of good dialogue….
Your disagreeing with me whether he’s 100% behind the wheel is NOT why I’m saying you’re biased towards him. It’s because for almost every time you acknowledged him doing something wrong, you defend it with a “yea, but.” Of course the site is your opinion. But you said you were trying to view his career with the good and the bad, from a distance. i.e., presumably with some OBJectivity.
Even admitting the Browns were better w/o him isn’t a direct concession. “At this point it’s hard to deny there’s something to it,” isn’t exactly stating it as fact; you’ve left plenty of wiggle room for it to be something else, whether that was intentional or not.
Since it’s apropros, I’m gonna compare what you wrote to what Aaron Rodgers. He could have said, “I’m sorry I misled you,” but instead, he opted for: “If you felt misled, I take full responsibility.” The first statement 100% owns the action, with NO room for misinterpretation. The second statement is meant to LOOK like an apology on the surface, but is easily interpreted as a double middle finger, because YOU took offense to his words, which isn’t his fault. Intentional or not, your post is similar in that it seems to say one thing, but is EASILY interpreted to mean something else because of how it’s worded with all the caveats.
I’ve fully admitted my bias against OBJ, multiple times in the last few posts. I can acknowledge his on-field talent AND still want him off my team. I never said he was a useless player with zero skills. Pre-injuries, on paper, yea, he was a supreme talent. I can admit that and still come to the conclusion that his selfishness is cancerous to team-building. I’d never want Aaron Rodgers on my team for the same reason. Selfish jerks make not good teammates, regardless of how talented they are.
This is a possibility though I still felt the issue with the offensive line was a bigger factor for Eli’s decline. With that said what happened against Green Bay, for some reason it was Eli who gets blame as always even though it was OBJ who was treating the ball like a grenade throughout the game.
I was really hoping the power of friendship with Landry would get him playing for the team instead of just doing whatever he wanted, but he was too free willed. That said, the addition by subtraction may really take off for the Browns.
I love the Baker face. It’s perfect.
Those Jeff Fisher Rams were so dirty. I remember the final game of 2013 where they clearly didn’t care about winning, their only goal was to injure Golden Tate for taunting them earlier in the year.
I got a feeling and looked it up, sure enough the 2014 Rams Defense was coached by Gregggggg Williams. Always Gregg Williams. Fuck that guy.
I’m a Rams fan and I didn’t even like the Fisher-coached teams. Too many nutsacks like Kenny Britt getting way too much leeway and one of the dirtiest teams on the field in the league.
F*ck Jeff Fisher.
One thing I find unrealistic is the first panel, where Gettleman is selling a bag of “Common Sense”. He can’t sell something that he doesn’t have
he misspelled “scents”.
fixed,
OBJ’s story is the prime example of raw media hype completely destroying a player’s likeability. The amount of hype that catch garnered was enough to make a lot of people instantly hate the guy, and it sucks because that really was an awesome catch, and you could argue that it influenced an entire generation of young athletes to better work on parts of their craft similar to a dude like Steph Curry revolutionizing 3 point shooting. I’m being serious. A lot of young athletes likely started focusing heavily on better hand-eye coordination just so they could make sick catches similar to what Odell was doing on a weekly basis.
It’s insane, I was still in middle school when he made that catch, and honestly, I hadn’t ever seen a single player become the face of a generation of young football fans in my life. It’s probably the closest we’ll get to a Randy Moss. Every time someone made a sick-ass catch during a pickup football game, everyone would shout “Odell!” It’s so dumb but he really was *that* big, despite there being arguably better players than him at his position at the time. It’s crazy to think about, but man, he was just so freakin’ cool, even if I hated the team he played for, and I know that’ll be the only time I’ll ever get to experience something like that in my lifetime.
It’s honestly why feel for the guy, because ultimately he’s turned into the easy scapegoat for frustrated fans to unload all of their ire onto. Seriously, listen to the way Browns fans have popped off on the guy over the course of the season. Beyond the “Baker is better without OBJ” takes, you’d think that OBJ was the sole reason their defense had been so inconsistent all year, or why their backfield had been riddled with COVID and injuries galore. It goes far beyond a simple lack of chemistry–they genuinely treat OBJ as if he alone was the cause of ALL of the team’s issues, despite that not being the case. Now that he’s gone, it’s like they think they’re guaranteed a Super Bowl appearance. It was a similar case with his ugly exit from New York as well.
Is he kind of a diva? Definitely. And I can see why that would be a sore spot in some locker rooms, but I still hope he finds the right spot and starts kicking ass somewhere (except Kansas City, please for the love of God do NOT go to Kansas City). I’d love for him to prove the doubters wrong, even if he’s not the same guy he once was.
This comment is great and basically sums up what I was trying to post. I’ve never seen an NFL player become a phenomenon like he did after that Cowboys game except Tebow. Unlike Tebow though OBJ was actually good at football. OBJ caused a lot of drama and problems but the response to him was always unbelievably absurd. The Carolina game was his only real sumbag moment, everything else was the average diva stuff blown up to absurd proportions because of who he was.
It actually felt like the Browns did him good until this happened. The noise was far less, he seemed much quieter. Part of that was leaving NY media. But his exit from the Browns with his dad’s Instagram post kinda ruined that.
Also he’s probably toast. Being a diva is one thing, the dude can’t stay healthy since his first big injury. His mobility and speed was his biggest skill and those are probably hampered now.
Thanks. I’m just glad it didn’t come off as super ridiculous since saying OBJ was the face of an entire generation is a very, very bold take lol. It’s just one of those things that you had to have been there for. For reference, I lived in Georgia around this time, and if you were to ask a bunch of kids from my area to name a top NFL WR, I’m pretty confident in saying that the vast majority of them would have said OBJ before they even thought of Julio Jones. It’s crazy looking back, but it made sense. OBJ wasn’t just an extremely talented player, he looked really cool doing it as well. Man would make a sick TD catch then follow it up with an even better TD celebration. Plenty of older fans enjoyed it but I know kids absolutely loved it.
On a side note, NFL Throwback recently uploaded that infamous Josh Norman-OBJ game, and while all the focus was on Josh Norman specifically for obvious reasons, it seems like everyone forgot that another player was also getting under OBJ’s skin all game long: Cortland Finnegan. Yes, another DB who was very well known for pissing off a top-tier wideout and sparking one of the most memorable fights of all time (see it again in all its glory! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZOEH44HHtI). It really puts everything about that game into perspective, and it’s just very ironic honestly.
Honestly outside OBJ’s horrible spearing and Norman throwing Beckham to the turf a few plays earlier, I remember my anger during that game was at the officials. They didn’t control either of them whatsoever and let that fight reach the point it did. Beckham and Norman both committed blatant personal fouls before the spear and both should have been in trouble and yelled at before that point. After the spearing it is unbelievable neither were ejected. Absolute failure by the officials.
Also, very curious Johnson never got the hate Beckham did after doing basically the same shit. Everyone more or less cheered him on for beating up Finnegan, but like, that shit was bad. Maybe he got off lighter due to less popularity and it being less “in character” but he basically got praised for it.
That game was absolutely an embarrassment for NFL officiating. Their inaction is the main reason why things escalated to the point that they did. OBJ and even Norman to an extent got plenty of flak for what happened, but the refs deserved the vast majority of the blame for doing absolutely nothing about it.
As for why Andre Johnson didn’t get the same reaction, it’s probably because that incident was pretty out of character for him. He was always more of the laid back and quiet type, so if HE was throwing hands with someone, there had to have been a great reason for it. Plus Cortland Finnegan had a terrible reputation for being a huge asshole, so most players were very happy to see him get his ass kicked. It’s a similar principle to what happened with AJ Green and Jalen Ramsey a few years back.
Also, for all of Josh Norman’s faults, he never had as terrible a reputation as Finnegan. He was more of a pest than anything. Somewhat obnoxious but pretty damn good at locking people down (at least in 2015). Sure, it was annoying, but I don’t recall people having any overt hatred for the guy prior to that game. Plus it didn’t seem like he was instigating very often against OBJ. He had a few moments where he was jawing at him, but a lot of that beef felt more like OBJ just openly targeting him and actively trying to crack his skull open. When Andre Johnson fought Finnegan, it was something that had built up to that point and just exploded. He wasn’t going out of his way to kill the guy, it just eventually boiled over and they scrapped. I think that difference is the key reason why Andre Johnson received basically nothing but praise and OBJ received a ton of hate. Not fair at all, but that’s just how things worked out.
The funny thing about THE CATCH is that Brent Grimes had an equally awesome catch in the same season! As a DB!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMKVExVCA-4
OBJ was on the ground. Optimus Grimes was (a) picking off a ball (b) targeted for Megatron – albeit badly – because he had to (c) go full stretch for it AND (d) two feet off the ground. Calvin Johnson is not small, and even HE had to look up at the guy.
OBJ’s got Best Catch? Bitch Please.
What’s funny is you just straight up did the exact same thing I mentioned already in the post. You can’t just ignore that OBJ was being interfered with. He was on the ground because he got blatantly held back yet still managed to thrust himself backward far enough to snag it and stay in bounds. Grimes had a free jump at the ball. Phenomenal catch, not as impressive.
Also Grimes used his whole hand. OBJ used 3 fingers.
Why is him using three fingers so impressive? Legitimate question. All that says to me is he was really close to dropping the ball. He didn’t and that’s great. But it’s not like he was being crushed by two linebackers and managed to hold on to it. He just… was really close to not completing the catch.
Isn’t the fact that he almost dropped it but didn’t exactly the answer? Catch a ball, falling to the ground, with the only 3 fingers long enough to reach the ball’s position, and hold on and pull it in as you slam into the ground. Nobody would have thought poorly of him if he dropped that ball, because making that catch is almost impossible.
Have your friend throw you a football and try to replicate it. Try with one hand. Now try to catch it with just three fingers. It’s way harder to use 3 fingers, but those were the only fingers he had that could reach the ball, and he did it and held on. Way harder than palming it with two extra digits to grip it, and that’s already hard to do. He used the only fingers he had to reach as far as he could to save that sucker from hitting the ground.
I guess we just value different things because what you said confirms my viewpoint that it doesn’t make it more impressive. A bit luckier, maybe. More impressive, nah.
As a note of clarification, that JUST means the three fingers thing. The acrobatics were insanely impressive, and I do agree with you that it was more impressive than Grimy’s INT.
I’m baffled by your opinion that using making a catch with less is somehow less impressive because it was closer to being dropped. That implies it was like a routine catch that he almost dropped, but it wasn’t. It was an incredibly difficult catch with almost zero chance of success that he still caught. His catch wasn’t even lucky, he didn’t bobble it or have it fall into his hands, he reached, snagged it perfectly with the tips of his 3 fingers, and secured it. Ball never even wobbled. There’s no luck there, it was nothing but skill. Doing all that with 3 fingertips is more impressive than doing that with a whole hand. He didn’t have his whole hand at his disposal, the ball was too far over his head. He made do with what he did have.
I think this whole argument is exactly what some of the posters have been talking about. People’s opinions THE CATCH are pretty excessive (it was an epic catch! nothing unique though), and so the constant hype around it led to negative opinions of OBJ and his fanbois.
He wasn’t able to get his whole hand on the ball, that implies that with a bit more air into his leap the ball would’ve been grasped more securely. Am I supposed to be more impressed that he WASN’T able to get that bit more air and had to make do with just three fingers than if he’d hypothetically gotten a bit more air after getting interfered with and got his whole hand on it? I don’t see why and I’m similarly baffled by your insistence that I should be.
Again, I’m not taking away from everything else that went into it. And by luckier, I didn’t mean it like “Oh it was just luck” I mean it like “Oh, we were that closer from this not happening”. Lucky for us, I guess, that we got to witness it. I could’ve worded it better, admittedly. The “nah” sounds really dismissive and that was my foot going into my mouth. But I really don’t see why this particular part of the catch should make it more impressive.
I still can’t wrap my head around the logic you are using. It feels like you are holding the fact that he didn’t get his full hand under the ball as a mark against it. As if catching a ball using a harder method is somehow less impressive because he had the ability to do it the easier way. My argument is he didn’t have a chance to do the easier, safer way. He had no ability to get his full hand under that ball. He got held, was thrown off balance, and reached as far as he possibly could and caught the ball with the only surface area he had available. If he had the ability to get his full hand under that ball but instead used his fingers, I could possibly see your point. But he didn’t. Since he didn’t, you can look at the very simple and what I think is undisputable fact that catching a ball with 3 fingers is harder to do than catching it with a full hand. If doing one is harder, it feels pretty easy to then say it’s more impressive.
Look how far he’s reaching to catch the ball. He didn’t have the ability to get more hand under it. The fact that he even managed to reach that far while off balance thanks to blatant DPI is still astounding.
https://wp.usatodaysports.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/90/2014/11/ap_aptopix_cowboys_giants_football_68976850.jpg
The fact that it was so close to not happening to the point where most people didn’t think he caught it until they watched the replay makes it. He had millimeters worth of margin of error to catch that ball and still did it.
It’s funny, because your logic absolutely tracks for a lot of his other catches. Odell had a tendency to try and showboat catches and do fancy one handed grabs when he should have used two hands and it caused a lot of drops. But that was not a factor in this catch, he had zero other options available to him except “use your fingertips and pray”
Who sexier? Rex Grossman or Dexter Lawrence? This is a debate I’m constantly having with my friends, even lead to a few stabbings.
To quote a Cowboys fan… “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Update: I hate everything, good for Matt Stafford though
best catches in giants history:
1 Tyree helmet catch
2 Daniel Jones one handed grab while getting smacked 2 weeks after a concussion
3 Victor Cruz bouncing off two eagles dbs for a house call
4 OBJ
sorry meant cruz making two eagles players comically smack into each other and taking it 74 yards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0__bjaIWIv4
I think Cruz’s bobble catch against the Seahawks a few weeks later was better but the Eagles play made Cruz, so a good pick
Also the Manningham Catch should be there even at the bottom
True. But at the same time: Who are we kidding? Both fans and the media love this.
Case in point, the Romo saga.
Undrafted FA player starts, win lots of games, while enjoying himself, and everything was dandy, until the Cabo thing, and the Cowboys losing the game. After that, he was portrayed as a goofball who did not care about football.
Eventhough he used to be one of the guys who worked hardest on the team.
From that moment forward, tv crews would make it a point to film him while goofing around, never talking to the coaches, or the other players, or studying formations unlike like Peyton Manning or Brady, or any of the other “serious” QBs who “wanted to win”.
And it would have stayed that way, until Romo played and won a game with broken ribs, and a punctured lung. But hey, at least we know what fans demand from a player to consider him serioius.
And still, people doubted him, until he got a good line and a running game, but when that happened, his body started failing him.
The good thing is that he never gave a crap, and is as happy as he can be.
So welcome to the club OBJ. The media and the fans want to hate you as much as they want to love you. Live with it.
Romo’s treatment by the media and fans was always bad, but I’d rather not compare him to OBJ. Unlike OBJ Romo never actually did anything bad.
The thing to remember is that OBJ loves attention, not drama. Where he goes wrong is that, when the drama finds him, he treats it like any other form of attention he’s getting and nurtures it. By all accounts, up until this season he liked it here, and up until a few weeks ago his personal relationship with Baker was fine. Even when he was burning the team, he was still a good teammate who worked hard and showed up.
Ultimately, you can throw talent together and, even if they both work hard toward the same goals, even if they have a great relationship off the field, sometimes they just don’t work well together on the field. The question they had to answer going into this season was whether Baker plays better without OBJ on the field, or whether he was simply maturing as a QB and OBJ just happened to go down as that process played out. They got their answer and moved on as soon as it became convenient. I hope OBJ finds himself and gets back to where he was wherever he lands, but it wasn’t working here and it had to end.
With OBJ leaving, the Browns lost one of their two most gif-able players.
We lost The Guy That Made The One-Handed Catch, but we still have The Guy That Made That Other Guy’s Helmet Come Off.
(BTW, still not a fan of the sticky gloves, even if everyone uses them. I’m not sure why the gloves are legal, but stickum itself is outlawed. Same concept…)
Can you remake this with Matt Rhule, Sam Darnold, and Joe Douglas? Actually save this one for a slow week next offseason
You can easily make a version of this with Ryan Leaf.