Odell Beckham Jr. has been one of the biggest supporters of the New York Giants this season. When the team started 1-7, Beckham was one of the players that remained positive and talked about how close the team had come to victory in certain games, and about how they could bounce back if they just made some adjustments and worked hard at it. When they defeated the 49ers to start the second half of the regular season, Beckham was in the camp that believed the Giants could go 8-0 to make the playoffs.
With their loss to the Eagles, the hopes for that are out the window. Beckham, however, hasn’t thrown in the towel yet and for better or worse, still has optimism at this point. “I wanted to win all eight, that’s not what happened, but there’s no giving up, there’s no quit, not from me or anybody in here. Just gotta win these last whatever games, see what happens.”
Perhaps more interestingly, Beckham had something to say about the Giants organization, which hasn’t been popular with the fans and hasn’t had a good reputation with neutral commentators and analysts this season. After all, from the outside looking in, things seem like a trainwreck. Even for Giants fans, it’s hard not to describe the season that way. But Beckham’s take was different.
“This is a winning organization. They’ve won in the past, so just gotta trust the process and at some point in time the goal is to obviously hang a banner and raise that trophy, so all you could do is just be optimistic and keep pushing forward and get better.”
The only thing is, this isn’t a winning organization. It was one in the past, but the Super Bowl years are long gone and even making the playoffs feels like a distant memory at this point. The Giants have underachieved consistently in recent years and that led to the organization cleaning house and replacing both the General Manager and the coach during the same offseason. Not something that happens in a winning organization.
But even if this take is off in terms of accuracy, one can’t complain about Beckham remaining motivated despite the bad circumstances this year. This kind of energy and optimism will be useful when the team is winning again in the future, and it’s not something you come across in every player.