Giants receiver Odell Beckham Jr. didn’t have anything to say to the media on Thursday. Possibly because he said plenty earlier in the week about the way his teammates have been hassling him.
Beckham explained recently to ESPN the manner in which his teammates have been picking on the player who took the league by storm as a rookie -- and who ended up on the cover of the Madden game.
“For me, this is what I love doing, and this is what I feel like my purpose was to do,” Beckham said, via Dan Graziano of ESPN.com. “So it takes a lot of strength for me to be able to come here every day and not practice, have to hear the little remarks, the little jokes, this and that.
“And it’s not just about a hamstring. It’s so many other things that people talk about. So it’s hard to come here and try and focus on ‘What play is up right now?’ instead of thinking about how bad you want to be out there.”
So who’s giving Beckham a hard time?
“Everybody,” Beckham said. “Because of the hamstring last year and then the fame, it’s like, ‘Oh, you’re too big-time now,’ all that. So I mean, I just hear it and you want to blow it off, but after a while it gets old, and it kind of bothers you.”
Via Bart Hubbuch of the New York Post, Beckham isn’t blameless when it comes to players giving each other grief.
“He gives it out as much as he takes it, let’s put it that way,” receivers coach Sean Ryan told Hubbuch.
“Those guys get after each other every type of way possible,” Ryan added. “They make fun of each other about what they eat for breakfast. A comment gets made here or there, but it’s all done [in fun]. The atmosphere in that [receivers meeting] room is a good atmosphere, and they certainly have fun with each other. They’re a tight-knit group of guys, and that shows up. He can handle it.”
Based on Beckham’s comments to ESPN, maybe he can’t. Either way, he should be glad Jason Pierre-Paul is holding out; otherwise, Beckham could be getting regularly thrown into the cold tub.
