What were Tom Coughlin, refs thinking? Beckham had to go
By
Steve Serby
Josh Norman and Odell Beckham Jr. fight, as they did much of Sunday. Photo: Paul J. Bereswill
Across from where Odell Beckham Jr. stood at his locker
after Panthers 38, Giants 35, hangs a blue-and-white sign that reads: “Control your emotions, Direct yourself under pressure and make the right choices.”
On a day when the Giants needed the best of Beckham, they got the worst of Beckham. They got the young Mike Tyson instead, which is all well and good inside a boxing ring, but never on a football field with a season on the line. You half expected Beckham to bite Josh Norman’s ear off.
Beckham’s raging competitive fires, much more often than not a blessing rather than a curse, left him out of control and out of his mind for too long in what turned into a shameful personal punkfest with nemesis Josh Norman.
He was Ohell Beckham Jr.
He somehow regained his composure long enough to catch the game-tying touchdown that capped a furious, improbable Giants’ comeback before Big Blah failed yet again to make a critical stand against MVP Cam Newton, but his WWE act had already helped put the Giants in a 35-7 hole.
Ohell.
Beckham should have been ejected for a lunging, violent helmet-to-helmet headbutt of Norman late in the third quarter, but the blind mice wearing zebra outfits didn’t see fit.
By halftime, Beckham had more personal fouls (1) and drops (2) than catches (0).
But at least he gave a nice Ya Gotta Believe halftime talk straight from Tug McGraw.
He finished with three personal fouls, one body-slam, one grazing right, and Tom Coughlin should have sat him for a series before someone got hurt when all hell and Ohell broke loose against Norman, who swung and missed a roundhouse right of his own at one point.
“You never want to hurt your team like that,” Beckham said. “I’ve learned it all throughout my life, always second man gets caught. It’s just unfortunate. You go back and watch the film tomorrow and you learn from it.”
He refused to entertain questions about Norman.
Norman was only too eager to entertain questions about Beckham.
“Michael Jackson,” Norman called Beckham.
“A ballerina who dances around.”
“The guy ran 15 yards down the field, dead-on collision, the play was all the way on the left side,” Norman said. “He came back and was hunting. It was malicious in every way. When they put it on the film, when they go back and they review it, I hope the league takes a better look at it, see what they can do, because players like that don’t need to be in the league. It’s ridiculous.”
Asked about the head-butt, Beckham said: “Caught a slant, and the man’s diving across my face. This is a tough game.”
Norman: “The guy took a shot at me I don’t know how many times. When you’re taking a shot at a guy’s head, c’mon now. That’s going a little bit too far.”
Beckham was asked if he was worried about the two of them being ejected.
“No,” he said. “We’re out there playing football, you know? You’re a competitor, I’m a competitor, we’re always gonna go at it. Anybody who’s played sports, you know you’re competitive. You’re gonna go as hard as you can.”
His day had started innocently enough,
rocking Christmas cleats during warm-ups. Then he dropped what would have been a 52-yard TD on the first series, and allowed Norman to get into his head time and time again.
“Those are fairy-tale moments that you look to. … I always say it, ‘Opportunities, they come and they go. And you can either seize the moment, or you let ’em go by.’ And there was one that, just thought it was so easy, and you let it go by, and that’s a moment you can never have back,” said Beckham, who was without a catch for nearly 40 minutes before finishing with six catches for 76 yards and a touchdown.
Coughlin should have ready Beckham the riot act, and did not. Asked if he considered sitting Beckham to tame the wild beast within him, Coughlin said: “It was a consideration. A matter of fact, it was a strong consideration.”
Not strong enough.
“He’s gotta learn at some point how to deal with some things,” Coughlin said. “I’m out there to win the football game.”
You can play like a crazed dog if you are Lawrence Taylor. Not if you are Odell Beckham Jr. It is a conversation Coughlin has had more than once with Beckham. And needs to have again.
“We’ve made progress along those lines, and today was a step backwards,” Coughlin said. “But I gotta believe we’ll regain that, once he settles down, we’ll be able to talk about it, and cooler heads, I’m thinking will prevail.”
Ohell.
