The Odell Beckham Questions

Speed Kills as Odell Beckham provesCredit SI

Posted By: County Sports Network April 20, 2020

The Odell Beckham Questions

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By STEVE KING

The Odell Beckham questions won’t go away.

Will he stay or go?

Odell Beckham Jr. wearing a football jersey: It appears OBJ will be staying in Cleveland.
© Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports It appears OBJ will be staying in Cleveland.

There are all kinds of rumors circulating regarding both of those possibilities. Those types of things – the controversies — seem to follow Beckham.

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Are these particular rumors legitimate, though? That is, is it really possible – perhaps even plausible – that Beckham could be dealt?

Only the Browns’ top men know the answers to the Odell Beckham questions.

What do I think?

That the Browns would like to keep Beckham because he is talented and, in the right situation, can really help the Browns. But also that he could easily be traded, especially during the first round of the NFL draft on Thursday night, to a team that is ready to compete for a championship but still has a hole at wideout it needs to fill. Indeed, either could happen. The situation really is that unpredictable.

I certainly think Beckham wants to go elsewhere. A picture is worth a thousand words, and the look on his face when he saw the Browns’ new/old uniforms for the first time says it all. It was the expression of a kid opening his Christmas presents with great expectations, only to get socks and underwear. Disappointed? Disinterested? Yeah, he sure appeared to be both. You can’t fake negative feelings, and he didn’t.

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But with all that having been said, there’s a whole other side of this that is not being discussed.

Remember Mike Hargrove, the manager of those memorable Indians teams of the 1990s? Yes, the Indians had a lot of talented players, but a good number of them had strong personalities. So, then, for the Indians to utilize that talent and become successful, Hargrove’s real job was to manage the personalities of those talented, strong-willed players. By doing that, he provided those players with a comfort level, thus giving them a better chance to be successful. And with those best players on board, the other players followed.  

The job of any coach or manager in any sport at any level in either gender is to not necessarily to build great relationships with the players at the end of the bench. It is to build great relationships with the best players, including the ones who need to be treated with kid gloves more often than not. That is what he, or she, is being paid to do.

The same thing applies to new Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski. He can’t worry so much about having a running dialogue with the 51st, 52nd and 53rd players on the roster. If he does, then great. If not, though, it’s certainly not the end of the world, because they need him a whole lot more than he needs them.

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Instead, Stefanski must get the respect of, get on the same page with, and rally the support of his best players, especially quarterback Baker Mayfield, since he plays the most important position in team sports and the Browns aren’t going anywhere if he fails to play well, and also the immensely talented but immensely complex and quirky guys, namely Beckham. To get to where they want to go this season, the Browns have to have a productive Beckham. Yes, of course, then, Mayfield and Beckham, along with fellow wideout Jarvis Landry and tight end Austin Hooper are all indelibly linked.

As was the case with Hargrove, that is what Stefanski is getting paid to do.

I think Stefanski believes his offense will be one of which Beckham will want to be a part. We’ll see.

But the truth of the matter is that Beckham must be a fan of the offense AND the Browns have to win, neither of which was the case last season, which is why the offense and the team overall struggled so much, and also why Beckham acted as he did.

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