CLEVELAND — No hard feelings? Yeah, right.
When wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. was traded from the New York Giants to the Cleveland Browns back in March, he was on a trip in Paris and going to dinner as news broke about the pending deal, and after the “wow” factor wore off, another feeling set in for the multi-time Pro Bowl pass catcher.
“My initial reaction was not disappointment.… I felt disrespected,” Beckham Jr. told GQ Magazine’s Mark Anthony Green. “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.
“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.”
“The show,” as Beckham Jr. refers to it, was an impressive one when he was not battling injuries.
Over 59 regular-season games, including 56 starts, in five years with the Giants, Beckham Jr. turned 622 targets into 390 receptions for 5,476 yards and 44 touchdowns. Beckham Jr. averaged 92.8 yards per game, including a league-best 108.8 during the 2014 season.
A three-time Pro Bowler, Beckham Jr. has put four 1,000-yard and three double-digit touchdown seasons on his resume since being selected with a first-round pick in the 2014 NFL Draft out of Louisiana State University.
Last season, Beckham Jr. put together a 77-catch, 1,052-yard, six-touchdown effort for the Giants, but he felt that still was not good enough for New York general manager Dave Gettleman or head coach Pat Shurmur.
“To be called like that, 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,” Beckham Jr. said. “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.”
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Regardless of how his tenure with the Giants ended and whatever baggage there is associated with that, Beckham Jr. is focused on continuing the turnaround of a Browns franchise that has not made the postseason since 2002.
“They had been talking about trading me,” Beckham Jr. said of the Giants. “They could never get past my past. There’s always that past that whatever happened, I would never be able to outgrow it. That’s why I don’t try to bring none of this to Cleveland. I don’t even care. When I get there, this is a fresh start for me.”
Click here to read the full article. The August edition of GQ will be available Tuesday.