NEW YORK _ Odell Beckham Jr. was openly critical of the Giants' game plan against the Eagles on Sunday, but he says he is on board with the big-picture blueprint for turning the team into a championship contender.
Then again, what choice does he have?
Asked what gives him hope that the Giants will be able to build a successful roster around him, Beckham said on Thursday: "This is a winning organization. They've won in the past. You just have to trust the process and at some point in time the goal is to obviously hang a banner and raise the trophy. All you can do is just be optimistic and keep pushing forward."
That's not heavy on specifics. It's basically just a verbal fingers-crossed, a nod to successes that happened before he arrived and a vague sense that it could happen again. But as Beckham comes to the end of his fifth season with the Giants, the fourth which will end without a playoff appearance, the star wide receiver must be wondering to himself if he'll ever win with this organization.
The Giants are in an awkward rebuild, half trying to win games now and half looking toward their future. Those opposing forces are most clearly at odds as the team tries to figure out how to handle its quarterback situation, sticking with Eli Manning who gives them the best chance to win on Sunday while trying to find opportunities to get a look at rookie Kyle Lauletta before the season runs out.
If Beckham plays 10 NFL seasons, he's halfway through his career. And he has nothing to show for it.
At least not the thing that he wants.
Sure, he has stardom and fame and money and a long list of records. But as he has said on numerous occasions _ and reiterated on Thursday _ none of that really matters without the victories. He has played 58 regular season games and is 24-34.
"Numbers don't mean anything without winning," Beckham said. "You can go home with 300 yards in a game with an L, it's not going to feel good. So it's really all about winning."
And this year, Beckham doesn't even have the numbers to draw comfort from. He spoke about how dissatisfied he is with his statistics this season, even though most of them are still among the tops in the NFL and he has surpassed 1,000 receiving yards for the fourth time in his career.
"I felt like I was so prepared this year," he said. "Not to say I feel like I'm having a bad year, I just don't feel like I've done as much as I can ... I don't feel like it's quite there. Each year I come in, 1,000 yards is a minimum. I don't look at it like, oh, I need to get 1,000 yards. My season starts after 1,000 yards. Trying to see how many yards I can get after 1,000. Ten touchdowns minimum. That's just the goal."
Beckham did not delve into his frustrations with the way the Giants failed to attack the Eagles' depleted secondary in the last game.
"Any questions about anything yesterday, or two weeks ago, or a year ago ... I'm here to talk about Chicago," he said of the upcoming opponent.
And now that the Giants can no longer execute his plan of winning the final eight games, he said the only thing left is to try to "win these last whatever games and see what happens."
What happens in the standings, which is pretty much a foregone conclusion for the Giants. Then, perhaps more significantly, what happens in the coming offseason.
This season began with no one knowing how much longer Beckham would be with the Giants. He was entering the final year of his contract, there was offseason chatter about trade possibilities, and he was coming off a significant ankle injury. Then he signed a five-year extension, tying him to the organization through the 2023 season. He's the only current Giant whose contract reaches that far into the future, although the business of the NFL tells us that he is far from guaranteed to stick around that long.
Whether that's enough time for the Giants to rebuild around him (assuming he is still part of their vision moving forward), well, all Beckham can do is hope the organization has a better idea of what it's doing than he thought they did against the Eagles.
