NFL insider Peter King devoted an ample portion of his weekly Football Morning in America column on NBC Sports to the Cleveland Browns and the blockbuster Odell Beckham Jr. trade. It’s a good fleshing out of just how quickly the deal came together.
One of the big takeaways is King’s reporting that this deal was not directly tied to the trade between the Browns and Giants that swapped Olivier Vernon and Kevin Zeitler. That assertion is not a commonly accepted fact among the media in either city, though nobody has proof other than Giants GM Dave Gettleman and Browns GM John Dorsey.
King also notes that Dorsey called Gettleman to initiate the trade after the Giants had tried to strike a deal with the Buffalo Bills in the wake of their deal with Pittsburgh for Antonio Brown fell through.
King’s concluding thought on the trade, after he has spoken with all sorts of (unnamed) sources is an interesting one,
I do not buy that it’s a great move; I do not buy it’s a bad move. And I can tell you the Giants, absent a strong pitch by Cleveland, would still have Beckham on the team today.
Gettleman echoed that sentiment in his press conference to introduce Peppers and explain his story to the New York media,
“What changed it is another team made us an offer we couldn’t refuse.”
That sure makes it seem like Dorsey went hard after landing his man. And Beckham will respect just how badly the Browns wanted him in Cleveland.
