Steve Serby

Steve Serby

NFL

Playing with fire or getting burned? The Odell Beckham dilemma

Odell Beckham Jr. wants to win the game the way Lawrence Taylor wanted to win the game. His raging fire is much more a blessing to the Giants and a curse to those who must deal every Sunday with his passion and fury.

Beckham knew full well his meteoric rise to stardom has made him a target, and the growing challenge that confronts him, more than ever, is walking the emotional tightrope between rising to the occasion and the heavens for the football, and rising above the fray so as not to hurt his team.

The last thing coach Tom Coughlin and the Giants should want to do is harness Beckham’s burning obsession with being legendary to the point he stops becoming the player they love and foes fear.

Not to worry. Beckham plans on doing it his way.

Beckham didn’t draw a penalty for any of the punches Bills players claim Beckham threw at them Sunday, but that doesn’t mean Coughlin — or the NFL, which fined him $8,681 — condones Beckham throwing a punch at Duke Williams following Eli Manning’s first interception of the season.

Beckham will appeal the fine.

“I get punched every single game … or whatever it is. I get hit in my face every single game,” he said. “These are grown men out here. I don’t think anybody should be talking about what happened after they lost the game.”

The Bills’ sour grapes whining included calling OBJ a “prima donna” and a “wonder boy.”
“It doesn’t bother me, I’m fine every single day. I sleep like a baby at night,” Beckham said with a chuckle.

I asked Eli Manning about the Bills calling his otherworldly receiver a prima donna.

“That’s probably a frustrated team,” Manning said. “They can say whatever, but I don’t know if that’s the word I would use to describe him.”

What word would he use to describe him?

“I’d say he’s a pretty talented receiver,” Manning said.

The pretty talented receiver shrugs and explains he simply is playing the game of football the way he believes it is meant to be played.

And he isn’t about to change the way he plays.

“I just love this game,” he said. “I’m very confident in my ability. I know what I’ve been given. I know my responsibilities that I have. And a lot of people take that as, you know, people build me up to be right here [raises right hand over head] and they hear so much about me that I don’t know if they hear so much about other people. So now, ‘OK, he’s what they’re talking about now. I can make my name off of him,’ or, ‘I could do whatever I need to do to get in that light.’ 

“Like I said, whatever this team needs me to do, if they need me to block 79 plays a game, that’s what I’m here to do. If they want me to catch 60 balls a game, I’ll do that as well. It doesn’t really bother me either which way.”

Such is the maturation of Odell Beckham Jr. Such is life without Victor Cruz.

Odell Beckham Jr. (right) and Stephon Gilmore grapple during the Giants’ 24-10 win over the Bills on Sunday.AP

“It’s tough to walk the line. You know that they’re out there targeting you and they’re out there trying to do things to you — as much as somebody would say that they’re not, they are, and that’s just the case,” Beckham said. “That’s all I came here to do was to play football and to do whatever this team needs me.”

The team needs him to be Beckham — just not at all costs.

“Obviously I was disappointed because I think he’s beyond and above a lot of that stuff, and I think he’ll put it behind him,” Coughlin said.

Beckham said he is mystified why the Bills were unable to put it behind them.

“It’s kind of confusing,” he said. “It kind of messes with my idea of their identity.”

He hardly minds the attention he receives on the field.

“It opens up other guys, it opens up other plays in our playbook,” Beckham said. “Hopefully they’ll keep continuing to do it, and other guys will make big plays like that like we keep doing.”

Coughlin told Beckham he loves the way he blocks.

“He flies around out there,” Coughlin said.

Beckham said general manager Jerry Reese told him to keep doing his job. It’s a tightrope they’re walking, too.

“Controlling my emotions is not really any of my concern,” Beckham said.

It’s better to have Odell Beckham Jr. on your side than not.