I hated that we need to include Jabrill in on this deal, but as Chill and I were discussing on the phone, replacing a strong safety is peanuts compared to what OBJ will bring to this offense. With all the weapons we have now, we will never be out of a game. Quick strike ability? Check.
Three legitimate deep threats, a wicked slot game, and a punishing rushing attack - man we will be tough to stop.
Was listening to The Fan on the way into work this morning. Ken and Lima had Dave Papp (radio voice of the Giants) on for an interview. Very impressed with what Dorsey brought in. Highlights:
* (Papp) - No one will out work Odell at his craft (even you Jarvis - lol). Odell is extremely passionate about football and works all the time at it.
* (Papp) - Odell is a very good locker room guy. Reports of friction between Odell and Eli were a total media fabrication. He personally witnessed on many occasions positive interactions within the building between Odell and Eli.
* (Papp) - The real reason why Odell did not play the last 4 games of 2018 was not what the media wanted us to believe, but he was truly hurt. He had a deep thigh contusion, so the Giants deferred to the judgment of the medical staff. He said Odell wanted to play.
* (Papp) - Moving on to Olivier Vernon - he is a very good and passionate (there's that word again!) football player. True, he did not play to the level that his contract would dictate, but Dave did not think that was Olivier's fault. He cited the Giants being horrible at drafting players for so many years, and then needing to overpay anyone with a shred of talent to stay. Dave emphatically said - "That is not Vernon's fault".
True, I wish we could have kept Jabrill, but if we snag Earl Thomas, as it has been rumored, and then get OBJ out of all this - oh baby - sign me up!
Here is the four letter network's reaction to the trade. They clearly favor the Browns in this deal. And it backs up what I heard on the radio this am.
I was going to update my schedule post - but I might as well do it here. Chill - your win prediction has my jets on FULL BLAST rolling down the runway. I know you said "minimum" - but I think 10 is too low. Serious. As a heart attack.
There is no reason at all we shouldn't sweep all 6 divisional games. For the first time in forever, we just have a better roster than any of our AFCN brethren. By far.
6 wins
That will leave 5 games at First Energy Stadium. The one thing that all these moves have given the fans is an out of control dose of hope. If you thought they had passion during the 0-16 campaign - wait until you see this year. There is no way on God's green earth that the best fans in the NFL don't unleash seventeen generations of frustrations on those five visiting teams. No way that energy doesn't pump our boys up to where they simply cannot lose. We sweep those games too.
5 wins
That leaves the remaining 5 road games against non divisional opponents. At Arizona - Browns rout. At SF - Browns win. At Denver - toss up game. At NE - close loss (refs get involved). At Jets - toss up game. At the very least - that's.......
Really! That shows how far Dorsey has brought us as an organization. The Giants can verbally say what they want - but their actions say that they are in full rebuild mode. And Dorsey smelled that desperation - and pounced.
When was the last time time that we exited a trade as the clear and undisputed winners?
What I know after this explosive week that I think you should know:
• A week ago this morning, there’d been no seeds planted for the Odell Beckham Jr.-to-Cleveland trade. Sources very close to both the Giants and Browns have told me there was no contact made about Beckham until last Tuesday morning—half a day before the deal was finalized shortly after 7 p.m. that night. So there was no talk of Beckham in the previous Olivier Vernon-for-Kevin Zeitler deal, as had been speculated.
• The Beckham trade would not have gotten done without the inclusion of Jabrill Peppers. Fact.
• Agent Drew Rosenhaus told me about a significant roadblock in negotiations for Antonio Brown the other day, which I confirmed with Raiders GM Mike Mayock on Saturday night. The impasse, on the night of Friday, March 8, nearly scuttled the deal. “I went to bed Friday night and the deal was off the table,” Raiders GM Mike Mayock told me Saturday night from his home in Oakland. [More detail in “What I Learned,” lower in the column.] Sticking points: guaranteed money and making Brown the highest-paid receiver in football.
• Of all the news of the past week, the most sobering was the report that Chiefs receiver Tyreek Hill is being investigated for domestic battery in Overland Park, Kans. The Kansas City Star reports a source said the incident resulted in a broken arm for the 3-year-old son of Hill and his fiancée. The fallout here could be devastating for Hill and for his family, obviously. That is what must be considered above all else. But down the line, the football implications, on the heels of the Chiefs already jettisoning 2017 NFL rushing champion Kareem Hunt after his abuse incident last year, could be massive. “Tyreek Hill is the most dangerous player we face,” one rival GM told me.
• Earl Thomas was prepared, with regrets, to accept a one-year guaranteed contract worth $12 million, with $1 million in likely-to-be-earned incentives, with an undisclosed team Wednesday morning. That team, I am told, was sure it had Thomas, whose market had never materialized the way safety markets developed for Landon Collins, Tyrann Mathieu and Adrian Amos. Then the Ravens swooped in, knowing they had to overpay to break up the other deal. “The Ravens were never in the picture,” Thomas told me Thursday. “I was shocked. I was blessed.” In the span of two hours and 10 minutes, the Ravens and Thomas’ agents worked out a four-year, $55-million deal. Moral of the story: It only takes one. And it doesn’t take long.
• The Miami Dolphins becoming the next Philadelphia 76ers? Or the next Cleveland Browns? I’ve got a theory, and it involves being patient with new coach Brian Flores. Very patient.
There’s something else that struck me in the past few days. It is not fun, and not exciting. It is just real, and it’s a wet blanket I think you all need to know. I’ll get to that in a minute, but first let’s dive into the trade that rocked the week.
The Giants had this attitude about Odell Beckham entering last week: As long as he’s ours, he’s ours. If we get a good to very good offer for him, we’ll trade him. If not, we’ll cope with him and continue to wait for the right offer, and if he’s on the team, we’ll make it work. Not the best way to proceed, but that was their reality. From the Giants’ point of view, the reality was his talent made him un-cuttable, but the energy it took to corral his greatness was something they would have preferred to live without. The maddening thing about watching this happen in the last week is how polarizing this was. It was either, Beckham is ruining the team—dump him, or Are you crazy! You can’t trade this Hall of Fame player!
The reality is it was probably smart to trade him. That doesn’t, however, make the decision to sign him for $18 million a year less than seven months ago very smart.
So … last week. I believe GM Dave Gettleman thought it was a sign of desperation to reach out and try to scare up offers—that he learned under Ernie Accorsi, who played that kind of game with the Chargers in last-second Eli Manning trade during the 2004 draft. So Gettleman reached out first to only one team before dealing Beckham: Buffalo. When the Antonio Brown deal fell through, Gettleman called Bills GM Brandon Beane wondering if he was so interested in Antonio Brown, how about Beckham? Beane didn’t bite.
Hearing the persistent rumors, Cleveland GM John Dorsey reached out Tuesday morning. No harm, no foul, he figured. That began a back-and-forth over the next 10 hours, approximately, that featured about 12 ideas/offers/counter-offers. The Giants wanted two first-round picks for Beckham, but I believe Gettleman knew that bounty might be tough to get because Beckham had proven himself a difficult player to handle. The Browns discussed some other players. But Gettleman, smarting from the prospect of losing safety Landon Collins in free agency to Washington (still hard to fathom why the Giants didn’t franchise their unquestioned defensive leader, Collins, at $11 million for 2019), had studied one Cleveland player he wanted: the 25th pick in the 2017 draft, versatile if slightly disappointing safety Jabrill Peppers. And at some point during the day, my understanding is Gettleman made it clear that the trade would not get done without Peppers being in it.
That was okay with Cleveland. My read of Peppers—and when I asked a couple AFC people about him in recent days, the view was shared—is that he was a good and aggressive run-defender and okay but not very instinctive or disruptive against the pass. He allowed, per Pro Football Focus metrics, passer ratings of 128.4 and 116.5 in coverage in his first two NFL seasons. If that doesn’t get better, Peppers won’t be a long-term Giant. But in the Giants’ eyes, Peppers could replace Collins, and he’d be the second first-round pick Gettleman wanted. And the Giants had made an iffy pick in the 2018 Supplemental Draft last summer, using their 2019 third-rounder on Western Michigan cornerback Sam Beal. Cleveland’s mid-first-round pick (17th overall), and the former first-rounder in Peppers, and the low third-rounder (95th overall) this year replacing the third-round pick they’d lost … all of that was compensation enough for Gettleman.
So when the deal got to the one and the three and Peppers, Gettleman and Dorsey agreed. By my measure, the Giants got about 80 percent value for Beckham; I’m not as high on Peppers as Gettleman obviously is—or as Gettleman has to be. Gettleman had to decide whether he wanted to leverage the Cleveland offer with other teams. Because Beckham’s stock had been tarnished, it’s doubtful, for example, that he could have fetched better than 17-95-Peppers from the 49ers for picks and/or a player in the next two drafts. The Niners have been sniffing around Beckham for months. But they’re just not a good match right now. The Giants need high picks and/or productive players. The Niners wouldn’t have wanted to trade a high pick this year or next plus rising star defensive tackle DeForest Buckner … and the Giants might not have wanted to settle, say, for next year’s first-rounder and this year’s second-rounder (36th overall) plus a lesser player than Buckner (say safety Jaquiski Tartt). The Giants need help now. So Gettleman took the bird in the hand. He lanced the boil.
In the coming days, or at the NFL meetings in Phoenix, Gettleman will be pressed on why he said, “You don’t give up on talent,” and then he gave up on it. He’ll probably say he didn’t give up on talent—he used Beckham to get more talent, including Peppers and two picks in the first three rounds in a draft stocked on defense, where the Giants are woebegone. Gettleman’s history in Carolina was to build from the inside out, to build his lines first. The Giants now have picks 6, 17, 37, 95 and 108, and even if they pick a quarterback first, New York should pound the defensive side of the ball with at least three or four of those choices.
So now the Giants can approach 2019 and beyond without the distraction of Beckham—but also without his greatness. I do not buy that it’s a great move; I do not buy it’s a bad move. And I can tell you the Giants, absent a strong pitch by Cleveland, would still have Beckham on the team today.
One last Giants-related thing: the Aug. 28, 2018 signing of Beckham to the five-year, $90-million deal. Think back to last August. Beckham had a quiet offseason, mostly, and part of the allure of the Giants job for rookie coach Pat Shurmur was to coach him. If Gettleman did not sign him before the season, the Beckham contract would have been the Sword of Damocles over the Giants’ season. And so the deal got done. Six weeks later, Beckham appeared in the ill-fated ESPN interview alongside Lil Wayne (Non Sequitur of the NFL Season) and questioned Eli Manning’s ability. Josina Anderson asked Beckham, who signed the biggest contract for a receiver ever, and was playing in the media capital of the world, if he was happy. “That’s a tough question,” he said. Strange thing to say, and, inside the Giants and around New York, the answer went over like a fart in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Shurmur disciplined Beckham. But it didn’t get much better from there—and missing the last month of the season with a quad injury left some in the organization wondering how hurt he was.
Part of me says, “Good luck, Cleveland.” And maybe history will repeat itself and Beckham eventually will be a problem. Maybe he won’t. His best football friend and one of the only people who can tell him when he’s being an idiot, Jarvis Landry, is the leader in the receivers room. His LSU receivers coach (and two-year position coach with the Giants),
Adam Henry, coaches the wideouts in Cleveland. And there’s Freddie Kitchens, the head coach who appears to have some blunt-force trauma to his communications.
Kitchens is the big X factor. Some boom-or-bust players seem like tech stocks at the start of their careers. Patrick Mahomes and Saquon Barkley turned into Apple, John Ross and Reuben Foster into AOL. Kitchens, who took over offensive play-calling after Hue Jackson was fired last fall, helped the Browns to a stunning 5-2 finish, making Baker Mayfield look like a fledgling Favre. Kitchens had enough of the Midas Touch to land Cleveland’s head-coaching job. Amazing story. But can he handle being a first-year head coach, and the pressure that comes with coaching an ascending Cinderella, and the play-calling, and handling the incendiary Beckham?
“From a planning standpoint,” Dorsey told me Saturday, “you want to surround a first-year head coach with quality coaches at all levels. I think we’ve done that. Surround him with a strong coaching staff [veteran offensive coordinator Todd Monken, ex-head coach Steve Wilks as defensive coordinator]. And remember: This head coach is very direct, very honest. He’s going to tell it like it is, and he’ll tell Odell like it is. He will hold players accountable. He’ll let players express themselves, as he should do.
“We really like Odell. He’s passionate. He’s competitive. He wants to be great. You can’t have enough of those guys. He’s on time. Everything you hear is he’s a great teammate. We’re thrilled to have him.”
Dorsey has had one heck of a run these last 11 months. He drafted the franchise quarterback (Baker Mayfield) and a long-term very good running back in Nick Chubb; traded for two Pro Bowl receivers (Landry, Beckham); signed the tarnished 2017 NFL rushing champ (Kareem Hunt). Now Dorsey has to be sure his offensive line is good enough, and I’d watch for some fortifications there.
He was in full we-haven’t-done-anything-yet mode when we spoke Saturday, but he knows the expectations, locally and nationally, are through the roof. The Browns are already the Vegas favorites to win the AFC North. Last time they won the division: 30 years ago, in 1989, when Dorsey was a Packers linebacker and Bud Carson coached the Browns.
“You’re never happy till you get to the ultimate goal,” Dorsey said. “Right now we’re a third-place team, 7-8-1, building a team that can compete. That’s all.”
He’s right, technically. But for the first time in 1.5 generations, there’s the weight of expectations on the Browns. Odell Beckham has put them there. profootballtalk.nbcsports.com
still trying to come to grips with these moves. It’s really overwhelming.
When you lay it all out. We took the Giants to the woodshed. As of now anyway. W won’t really know the true value of the trade until we see how the draft picks turn out, and if Peppers continues to develo. But, on paper we killed this deal.
Very nice listen, good to finally hear the Browns getting some love and respect, even though these are the same buttheads, lol, that have ripped on Cleveland for years. I do agree with a lot of points in this video, this team has enough talent to overcome any shortcomings at LB or CB, and we still have the rest of the FA period and draft to address some of that, FA could address it more quickly, but draft could address it more long term. All in all, I really believe the Browns can win this division and make a solid playoff run, possibly have a playoff game at home, and with a hard work, a little luck, and NO biased refs, could get to the Super Bowl. The biggest thing that could stop them, aside from biased refs, is injuries, which I pray stays far away from Browns players.
WEll, I don't know about the 17th pick not being a first round talent? Seems to me the last regime said the same thing about Carson Wentz, and he did pretty good his first seaso, and the second until the knee injury. Now, last season he suffered another injury but I still believe he has high caliber talent. The only thing hurting him is injury, he may go the way of Sam Bradford, but without as high a contract, I actually hope he's able to play well for years, hate to see anyone go down because of injury. However, he did help get them to the playoffs, before Foles lead them to victory in the final 6 games, 3 in regular season and 3 in the playoffs.
The Eagles may seem to be ahead of the Browns in that big trade, but we have every opportunity to tie them and I think we may have the better chance to win multiple Super Bowls, I know, we have to win one first, but I believe it's coming, sooner rather than later.
I hated that we need to include Jabrill in on this deal, but as Chill and I were discussing on the phone, replacing a strong safety is peanuts compared to what OBJ will bring to this offense. With all the weapons we have now, we will never be out of a game. Quick strike ability? Check.
Three legitimate deep threats, a wicked slot game, and a punishing rushing attack - man we will be tough to stop.
Is it September yet?
Was listening to The Fan on the way into work this morning. Ken and Lima had Dave Papp (radio voice of the Giants) on for an interview. Very impressed with what Dorsey brought in. Highlights:
* (Papp) - No one will out work Odell at his craft (even you Jarvis - lol). Odell is extremely passionate about football and works all the time at it.
* (Papp) - Odell is a very good locker room guy. Reports of friction between Odell and Eli were a total media fabrication. He personally witnessed on many occasions positive interactions within the building between Odell and Eli.
* (Papp) - The real reason why Odell did not play the last 4 games of 2018 was not what the media wanted us to believe, but he was truly hurt. He had a deep thigh contusion, so the Giants deferred to the judgment of the medical staff. He said Odell wanted to play.
* (Papp) - Moving on to Olivier Vernon - he is a very good and passionate (there's that word again!) football player. True, he did not play to the level that his contract would dictate, but Dave did not think that was Olivier's fault. He cited the Giants being horrible at drafting players for so many years, and then needing to overpay anyone with a shred of talent to stay. Dave emphatically said - "That is not Vernon's fault".
True, I wish we could have kept Jabrill, but if we snag Earl Thomas, as it has been rumored, and then get OBJ out of all this - oh baby - sign me up!
Here is the four letter network's reaction to the trade. They clearly favor the Browns in this deal. And it backs up what I heard on the radio this am.
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/26243093/grading-odell-beckham-jr-trade-giants-browns-won
With these moves - Baker is so here
The only people mad about this trade either hate the Browns (Cowherd, that tool Mike Silver) or are simply ignorant.
This is the best roster the Cleveland Browns have fielded in my lifetime. It isn't close. 10 win minimum next season.
I was going to update my schedule post - but I might as well do it here. Chill - your win prediction has my jets on FULL BLAST rolling down the runway. I know you said "minimum" - but I think 10 is too low. Serious. As a heart attack.
There is no reason at all we shouldn't sweep all 6 divisional games. For the first time in forever, we just have a better roster than any of our AFCN brethren. By far.
6 wins
That will leave 5 games at First Energy Stadium. The one thing that all these moves have given the fans is an out of control dose of hope. If you thought they had passion during the 0-16 campaign - wait until you see this year. There is no way on God's green earth that the best fans in the NFL don't unleash seventeen generations of frustrations on those five visiting teams. No way that energy doesn't pump our boys up to where they simply cannot lose. We sweep those games too.
5 wins
That leaves the remaining 5 road games against non divisional opponents. At Arizona - Browns rout. At SF - Browns win. At Denver - toss up game. At NE - close loss (refs get involved). At Jets - toss up game. At the very least - that's.......
2 more wins
How does 13-3 grab you boys and girls?
@Brooksie
OBJ has had an instant effect on the local economy - and he reaches another sport.
@Randy Boydston You up for a trip to Canal Park to score one of these OBJ dogs? I am so there.
https://www.ohio.com/news/20190314/diamond-deli-rubberducks-honor-odell-beckham-jr-with-culinary-creativity
Hell yeah Brooksie!! I’m so down with hoing to some Rubber Ducks games.
You and me my man - we are heading to Canal Park! Book it!
Anyone else?
Looks like we're not the only ones happy about the OBJ trade. The Cowboys, Eagles, and Redskins are also elated, to get him out of their division. lol
https://sports.yahoo.com/jerry-jones-browns-thank-getting-045017412.html
Here is a nice behind the scenes look at the timeline that became the OBJ to the Browns trade.
From Mary Kay Cabot of cleveland.com
https://www.cleveland.com/expo/sports/g66l-2019/03/9ffbf569f72361/the-browns-odell-beckham-jr-trade-a-behind-the-scenes-look-.html
We really made the Giants look incompetent in this deal. I love it.
Really! That shows how far Dorsey has brought us as an organization. The Giants can verbally say what they want - but their actions say that they are in full rebuild mode. And Dorsey smelled that desperation - and pounced.
When was the last time time that we exited a trade as the clear and undisputed winners?
profootballtalk.nbcsports.com
Peter King's Football Morning In America
How The Odell Deal Got Done,
What I know after this explosive week that I think you should know:
• A week ago this morning, there’d been no seeds planted for the Odell Beckham Jr.-to-Cleveland trade. Sources very close to both the Giants and Browns have told me there was no contact made about Beckham until last Tuesday morning—half a day before the deal was finalized shortly after 7 p.m. that night. So there was no talk of Beckham in the previous Olivier Vernon-for-Kevin Zeitler deal, as had been speculated.
• The Beckham trade would not have gotten done without the inclusion of Jabrill Peppers. Fact.
• Agent Drew Rosenhaus told me about a significant roadblock in negotiations for Antonio Brown the other day, which I confirmed with Raiders GM Mike Mayock on Saturday night. The impasse, on the night of Friday, March 8, nearly scuttled the deal. “I went to bed Friday night and the deal was off the table,” Raiders GM Mike Mayock told me Saturday night from his home in Oakland. [More detail in “What I Learned,” lower in the column.] Sticking points: guaranteed money and making Brown the highest-paid receiver in football.
• Of all the news of the past week, the most sobering was the report that Chiefs receiver Tyreek Hill is being investigated for domestic battery in Overland Park, Kans. The Kansas City Star reports a source said the incident resulted in a broken arm for the 3-year-old son of Hill and his fiancée. The fallout here could be devastating for Hill and for his family, obviously. That is what must be considered above all else. But down the line, the football implications, on the heels of the Chiefs already jettisoning 2017 NFL rushing champion Kareem Hunt after his abuse incident last year, could be massive. “Tyreek Hill is the most dangerous player we face,” one rival GM told me.
• Earl Thomas was prepared, with regrets, to accept a one-year guaranteed contract worth $12 million, with $1 million in likely-to-be-earned incentives, with an undisclosed team Wednesday morning. That team, I am told, was sure it had Thomas, whose market had never materialized the way safety markets developed for Landon Collins, Tyrann Mathieu and Adrian Amos. Then the Ravens swooped in, knowing they had to overpay to break up the other deal. “The Ravens were never in the picture,” Thomas told me Thursday. “I was shocked. I was blessed.” In the span of two hours and 10 minutes, the Ravens and Thomas’ agents worked out a four-year, $55-million deal. Moral of the story: It only takes one. And it doesn’t take long.
• The Miami Dolphins becoming the next Philadelphia 76ers? Or the next Cleveland Browns? I’ve got a theory, and it involves being patient with new coach Brian Flores. Very patient.
There’s something else that struck me in the past few days. It is not fun, and not exciting. It is just real, and it’s a wet blanket I think you all need to know. I’ll get to that in a minute, but first let’s dive into the trade that rocked the week.
The Giants had this attitude about Odell Beckham entering last week: As long as he’s ours, he’s ours. If we get a good to very good offer for him, we’ll trade him. If not, we’ll cope with him and continue to wait for the right offer, and if he’s on the team, we’ll make it work. Not the best way to proceed, but that was their reality. From the Giants’ point of view, the reality was his talent made him un-cuttable, but the energy it took to corral his greatness was something they would have preferred to live without. The maddening thing about watching this happen in the last week is how polarizing this was. It was either, Beckham is ruining the team—dump him, or Are you crazy! You can’t trade this Hall of Fame player!
The reality is it was probably smart to trade him. That doesn’t, however, make the decision to sign him for $18 million a year less than seven months ago very smart.
So … last week. I believe GM Dave Gettleman thought it was a sign of desperation to reach out and try to scare up offers—that he learned under Ernie Accorsi, who played that kind of game with the Chargers in last-second Eli Manning trade during the 2004 draft. So Gettleman reached out first to only one team before dealing Beckham: Buffalo. When the Antonio Brown deal fell through, Gettleman called Bills GM Brandon Beane wondering if he was so interested in Antonio Brown, how about Beckham? Beane didn’t bite.
Hearing the persistent rumors, Cleveland GM John Dorsey reached out Tuesday morning. No harm, no foul, he figured. That began a back-and-forth over the next 10 hours, approximately, that featured about 12 ideas/offers/counter-offers. The Giants wanted two first-round picks for Beckham, but I believe Gettleman knew that bounty might be tough to get because Beckham had proven himself a difficult player to handle. The Browns discussed some other players. But Gettleman, smarting from the prospect of losing safety Landon Collins in free agency to Washington (still hard to fathom why the Giants didn’t franchise their unquestioned defensive leader, Collins, at $11 million for 2019), had studied one Cleveland player he wanted: the 25th pick in the 2017 draft, versatile if slightly disappointing safety Jabrill Peppers. And at some point during the day, my understanding is Gettleman made it clear that the trade would not get done without Peppers being in it.
That was okay with Cleveland. My read of Peppers—and when I asked a couple AFC people about him in recent days, the view was shared—is that he was a good and aggressive run-defender and okay but not very instinctive or disruptive against the pass. He allowed, per Pro Football Focus metrics, passer ratings of 128.4 and 116.5 in coverage in his first two NFL seasons. If that doesn’t get better, Peppers won’t be a long-term Giant. But in the Giants’ eyes, Peppers could replace Collins, and he’d be the second first-round pick Gettleman wanted. And the Giants had made an iffy pick in the 2018 Supplemental Draft last summer, using their 2019 third-rounder on Western Michigan cornerback Sam Beal. Cleveland’s mid-first-round pick (17th overall), and the former first-rounder in Peppers, and the low third-rounder (95th overall) this year replacing the third-round pick they’d lost … all of that was compensation enough for Gettleman.
So when the deal got to the one and the three and Peppers, Gettleman and Dorsey agreed. By my measure, the Giants got about 80 percent value for Beckham; I’m not as high on Peppers as Gettleman obviously is—or as Gettleman has to be. Gettleman had to decide whether he wanted to leverage the Cleveland offer with other teams. Because Beckham’s stock had been tarnished, it’s doubtful, for example, that he could have fetched better than 17-95-Peppers from the 49ers for picks and/or a player in the next two drafts. The Niners have been sniffing around Beckham for months. But they’re just not a good match right now. The Giants need high picks and/or productive players. The Niners wouldn’t have wanted to trade a high pick this year or next plus rising star defensive tackle DeForest Buckner … and the Giants might not have wanted to settle, say, for next year’s first-rounder and this year’s second-rounder (36th overall) plus a lesser player than Buckner (say safety Jaquiski Tartt). The Giants need help now. So Gettleman took the bird in the hand. He lanced the boil.
In the coming days, or at the NFL meetings in Phoenix, Gettleman will be pressed on why he said, “You don’t give up on talent,” and then he gave up on it. He’ll probably say he didn’t give up on talent—he used Beckham to get more talent, including Peppers and two picks in the first three rounds in a draft stocked on defense, where the Giants are woebegone. Gettleman’s history in Carolina was to build from the inside out, to build his lines first. The Giants now have picks 6, 17, 37, 95 and 108, and even if they pick a quarterback first, New York should pound the defensive side of the ball with at least three or four of those choices.
So now the Giants can approach 2019 and beyond without the distraction of Beckham—but also without his greatness. I do not buy that it’s a great move; I do not buy it’s a bad move. And I can tell you the Giants, absent a strong pitch by Cleveland, would still have Beckham on the team today.
One last Giants-related thing: the Aug. 28, 2018 signing of Beckham to the five-year, $90-million deal. Think back to last August. Beckham had a quiet offseason, mostly, and part of the allure of the Giants job for rookie coach Pat Shurmur was to coach him. If Gettleman did not sign him before the season, the Beckham contract would have been the Sword of Damocles over the Giants’ season. And so the deal got done. Six weeks later, Beckham appeared in the ill-fated ESPN interview alongside Lil Wayne (Non Sequitur of the NFL Season) and questioned Eli Manning’s ability. Josina Anderson asked Beckham, who signed the biggest contract for a receiver ever, and was playing in the media capital of the world, if he was happy. “That’s a tough question,” he said. Strange thing to say, and, inside the Giants and around New York, the answer went over like a fart in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Shurmur disciplined Beckham. But it didn’t get much better from there—and missing the last month of the season with a quad injury left some in the organization wondering how hurt he was.
Part of me says, “Good luck, Cleveland.” And maybe history will repeat itself and Beckham eventually will be a problem. Maybe he won’t. His best football friend and one of the only people who can tell him when he’s being an idiot, Jarvis Landry, is the leader in the receivers room. His LSU receivers coach (and two-year position coach with the Giants), Adam Henry, coaches the wideouts in Cleveland. And there’s Freddie Kitchens, the head coach who appears to have some blunt-force trauma to his communications.
Kitchens is the big X factor. Some boom-or-bust players seem like tech stocks at the start of their careers. Patrick Mahomes and Saquon Barkley turned into Apple, John Ross and Reuben Foster into AOL. Kitchens, who took over offensive play-calling after Hue Jackson was fired last fall, helped the Browns to a stunning 5-2 finish, making Baker Mayfield look like a fledgling Favre. Kitchens had enough of the Midas Touch to land Cleveland’s head-coaching job. Amazing story. But can he handle being a first-year head coach, and the pressure that comes with coaching an ascending Cinderella, and the play-calling, and handling the incendiary Beckham?
“From a planning standpoint,” Dorsey told me Saturday, “you want to surround a first-year head coach with quality coaches at all levels. I think we’ve done that. Surround him with a strong coaching staff [veteran offensive coordinator Todd Monken, ex-head coach Steve Wilks as defensive coordinator]. And remember: This head coach is very direct, very honest. He’s going to tell it like it is, and he’ll tell Odell like it is. He will hold players accountable. He’ll let players express themselves, as he should do.
“We really like Odell. He’s passionate. He’s competitive. He wants to be great. You can’t have enough of those guys. He’s on time. Everything you hear is he’s a great teammate. We’re thrilled to have him.”
Dorsey has had one heck of a run these last 11 months. He drafted the franchise quarterback (Baker Mayfield) and a long-term very good running back in Nick Chubb; traded for two Pro Bowl receivers (Landry, Beckham); signed the tarnished 2017 NFL rushing champ (Kareem Hunt). Now Dorsey has to be sure his offensive line is good enough, and I’d watch for some fortifications there.
He was in full we-haven’t-done-anything-yet mode when we spoke Saturday, but he knows the expectations, locally and nationally, are through the roof. The Browns are already the Vegas favorites to win the AFC North. Last time they won the division: 30 years ago, in 1989, when Dorsey was a Packers linebacker and Bud Carson coached the Browns.
“You’re never happy till you get to the ultimate goal,” Dorsey said. “Right now we’re a third-place team, 7-8-1, building a team that can compete. That’s all.”
He’s right, technically. But for the first time in 1.5 generations, there’s the weight of expectations on the Browns. Odell Beckham has put them there. profootballtalk.nbcsports.com
Great article Stabbs
still trying to come to grips with these moves. It’s really overwhelming.
When you lay it all out. We took the Giants to the woodshed. As of now anyway. W won’t really know the true value of the trade until we see how the draft picks turn out, and if Peppers continues to develo. But, on paper we killed this deal.
That's what happens when you are dealing with a GM desperate to save face.
A folk hero is born. Absolutely hilarious!
I was mesmerized by this video - from people who have been there and know. This is what OBJ means to this offense
Very nice listen, good to finally hear the Browns getting some love and respect, even though these are the same buttheads, lol, that have ripped on Cleveland for years. I do agree with a lot of points in this video, this team has enough talent to overcome any shortcomings at LB or CB, and we still have the rest of the FA period and draft to address some of that, FA could address it more quickly, but draft could address it more long term. All in all, I really believe the Browns can win this division and make a solid playoff run, possibly have a playoff game at home, and with a hard work, a little luck, and NO biased refs, could get to the Super Bowl. The biggest thing that could stop them, aside from biased refs, is injuries, which I pray stays far away from Browns players.
https://sports.yahoo.com/report-browns-think-they-got-odell-bekcham-without-trading-first-round-talent-222750905.html
WEll, I don't know about the 17th pick not being a first round talent? Seems to me the last regime said the same thing about Carson Wentz, and he did pretty good his first seaso, and the second until the knee injury. Now, last season he suffered another injury but I still believe he has high caliber talent. The only thing hurting him is injury, he may go the way of Sam Bradford, but without as high a contract, I actually hope he's able to play well for years, hate to see anyone go down because of injury. However, he did help get them to the playoffs, before Foles lead them to victory in the final 6 games, 3 in regular season and 3 in the playoffs.
The Eagles may seem to be ahead of the Browns in that big trade, but we have every opportunity to tie them and I think we may have the better chance to win multiple Super Bowls, I know, we have to win one first, but I believe it's coming, sooner rather than later.