Giants receiver Odell Beckham Jr. committed so many infractions on Sunday that he has now apologized twice.
In addition to the statement Beckham posted on Twitter following the issuance of James Thrash’s decision to uphold the one-game suspension, Beckham issued a statement through the Giants.
“I owe some people an apology,” Beckham said. “I wasn’t raised to act like I did the other day. I am not here to make excuses for my conduct. This isn’t about anything that was said or done to me. This is about my behavior, and I am responsible for my behavior. People expect better from me, and I expect better from myself.”
Beckham then apologized to the team, its owners, G.M. Jerry Reese, and the fans. Beckham likewise apologized to coach Tom Coughlin, the coaching staff, and his teammates.
“A lot of kids look up to me as a role model,” Beckham said. “That is a responsibility I accept and take seriously. Many of the parents of those kids have asked since Sunday what they should say to their children about my conduct. I don’t have the perfect answer, but I think one thing they can say is how I handled myself the other day is an example of how not to conduct yourself. I displayed poor sportsmanship. And those parents can also say that when you act like that, there are consequences. And I hope to be an example of somebody who did something wrong and learned from it.”
Beckham is being praised for his contrition, but he’d be worthy of even more praise if he’d issued the apologies not after the ruling that upheld his suspension but before it. The fact that the statements came in the wake of Thrash’s decision carries the clear fingerprints of garden-variety legal advice that counsels someone who is accused of wrongdoing to say nothing until the case ends.
In Beckham’s case, Thrash’s ruling changed nothing. It seems that Beckham’s camp (whether the team, his agent, the union, or a combination of the three) persuaded him to display complete (and repetitive) contrition only after it was clear that he’d be compelled to serve the suspension.
So what would he have said if the appeal had been successful? Would he have been apologetic and contrite? Or would he have had more to say about the things that were “said and done to me” than to merely make enough of a reference to them to remind everyone of the leaks of all the things that were allegedly said and done to him?
Meanwhile, Beckham hasn’t apologized to Josh Norman for putting a helmet into his earhole, the dangerous act that cemented the suspension. If Beckham were truly sorry for what he did, he’d set aside everything Norman said and did and apologize for conduct that fell so far beyond the boundaries of acceptable football maneuvers that the league saw fit to prevent him from playing an entire game because of it.
