INDIANAPOLIS _ Dave Gettleman said he "isn't losing sleep" over Odell Beckham Jr.'s recent tweet that he plans on playing "0" snaps in the upcoming preseason. What should be more of a concern to the Giants and their general manager are the zeroes that will fill out Beckham's next contract.
The star receiver is entering the final year of his rookie deal, so if the Giants want to keep him long-term, they'll have to cough up a lot of money. Gettleman would not discuss any specifics to negotiations with any players, but he did leave the door open for a monster deal coming down the road for Beckham.
"This is America," he said when asked if a wide receiver could hypothetically be the first non-quarterback to make $20 million per season. "It's a great place. Anything's possible."
Beckham could be that hypothetical. He is coming off ankle surgery that hampered or sidelined him for most of the 2017 season. And there are also off-the-field matters that have concerned the Giants regarding his maturity. The zero preseason snaps tweet may be one such incident.
"You know, let me tell you something: social media's evil," Gettleman said. "He's a big boy. You gotta figure it out."
As for Beckham's past conflicts, Gettleman said they don't enter his thinking.
"For me, that's all hearsay," he said. "I wasn't in the room. ... I don't have all the information. I wasn't involved in the conversations. I've had one long conversation with Odell. We've texted back and forth, just hey how you doing, how's the rehab going. It's a new day, it's a clean slate.
"I'm not worried about what happened in the past," he continued. "You want to know the why _ you always got to get to the why _ and eventually we'll get to that. And if you don't get to the why, you can't figure it out. You can't fix it. So we'll get to the why, and we'll move forward."
Forward to what could be the biggest contract in NFL history for a non-quarterback? Maybe even making him the highest-paid player in the league as was floated last preseason?
"For me, the biggest impact is whether he helps us win," Gettleman said. "I'm not in marketing. I'm on the football side of the building. And at the end of the day, if we don't win, I get fired. OK? So what you do is you pay a player his value, what his value is, and that's what you do."
In Beckham's case, that value may be historic.
