Beckham: Giants 'weren't man enough' to tell me about trade
Michael McClymont
The Browns open training camp this week, but before Odell Beckham Jr. prepares for his first season in Cleveland, he had a few more things to say about his time with the New York Giants.
Beckham discussed the fallout from the March trade that shipped him out of the Big Apple and said he learned of the deal when he was inundated with messages while heading to dinner in Paris.
"My initial reaction was not disappointment ... I felt disrespected," Beckham said to GQ'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. Even the year we went to the playoffs and everyone was talking about this and that. And we went there, and I didn't have a great playoff game. Don't get me wrong, I had a terrible game. But I left the game with seven targets, and I'm supposed to be your No. 1 receiver.
"... 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 5-11 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."
Beckham insisted he has nothing but respect for Giants president and CEO John Mara and pointed to general manager Dave Gettleman and head coach Pat Shurmur for shipping him out seven months after he signed a five-year, $90-million extension with the team.
Even after signing the deal, Beckham said he felt unwanted and was seeking a fresh start before the 2018 season.
"I can't do this anymore. I just can't do it. I wasn't happy," he said. "I wasn't in a good place. ... I feel like everything is about happiness, and I just was not."
Beckham said he contemplated retiring at just 24 - his age during the 2016 season.
"Twenty-four years old. Just off it. To love something so much to a place where it is my everything, and to watch it be tainted, or all kinds of things be in the middle of it," he said. "Like, it hurt me to my soul. It be like loving someone and putting them on such a level to where life is about them and you love that person through anything. Through the good, the bad. And to watch them do something so heinous and vulgar. Something just so, like, almost unforgivable. You still love them, but it's, like, wow."