Odell Beckham Jr.

There’s been talk of shutting down New York Giants star Odell Beckham Jr. for the season because of injury, but at this point, nobody really knows what’s happening. There’s been no official decision from the team yet and that was revealed by head coach Pat Shurmur on Wednesday, when Shurmur confirmed that Beckham wouldn’t go on the injured reserve list.

Furthermore, Shurmur has actively encouraged Beckham to return before the end of the season, even if it’s unnecessarily risky at this point with the Giants out of the playoff race.

“I think at this point, I think it’s the player’s responsibility to do everything they can to get on the field… It’s important that we do everything we can to show up,” Shurmur also stated on Wednesday, while talking about the upcoming week 16 game against the Indianapolis Colts.

Beckham himself has expressed the desire to play in this game, after drawing criticism for missing the last two games with a quad injury.

“If I can play, I’m going to play. It’s just the bottom line. You dreamed of being here, you dedicated, gave everything to be here, so you do all this to play games. As much fun as meetings are and all that other stuff, you do this to play games,” Beckham said. It’s in line with Beckham’s statements all season long. Despite a slow start and a poor early record for the team as a whole, Beckham has consistently been one of the most positive players and has shown an enthusiasm for getting on the field and playing.

But even if Beckham wants to play, that might not be the best move for himself or the team. The Giants are already out of the race for the playoffs, and therefore, it might not be worth it to risk the health of one of the team’s best players for the sake of getting wins in two games that, in the grand scheme of things, don’t mean much.

That’s not to say that they should tank the last two games. But on the other hand, it might not be wise to risk a player like Beckham on them either. Still, those risks don’t seem to have much of an effect on Beckham himself. If it comes down to his own decision, it sounds like we might just see him on the field come Sunday.

“It’s life, so like I said, just taking it a day at a time. There’s not much more I can do than do that and hopefully I feel better tomorrow and then the day after I feel better and day after and day after. I just keep feeling better, that’s the goal.”

New York Giants star reliever Odell Beckham Jr. injured his quad on the very last play of the week 12 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. Kamu Grugier-Hill, a linebacker for the Eagles, swung his leg out in an attempt to stop Beckham Jr., who was tripped violently (no flag was called of course), and was forced into rehab for the next three weeks.

Ahead of the week 16 game against the Indianapolis Colts, the Giants have several players missing from practice, one of which is Beckham, who is still nursing the tender quad.

The Giants would be wise to sit Beckham for the remainder of the year, given the team is mathematically ruled out of the playoffs and are far from any sort of meaningful matchups.

Playing the star receiver would only further the probability of injury. Conserving his health and saving him for another day is the route the Giants must take, but they also can’t shit him down for the rest of the year, so they will play the injury report game.

OBJ was though to have suffered a hematoma – a collection of blood that can very painful after a significant hit to a body part. Recent reports state that he simply strained the quad and has been limited in practice the past few weeks.

With the New York Giants in do-or-die mode going into the week 15 matchup against the Tennessee Titans, every bit of talent on the roster will help push them over the hump. The Giants need to win their last three games to even have a shot at making the playoffs, and with Odell Beckham Jr, being ruled OUT ahead of the game, they will need to rely heavily on Saquon Barkley again.

Odell Beckham Jr. injury update:

Beckham was also out last week with a bruised quad, but Big Blue managed to stifle a struggling Washington team 40-16. The Titans will be a whole different beast, as they have one of the league’s better defensive units, and Marcus Mariota is much better than Mark Sanchez.

Expect the Giants to come out of the gate flying, finding ways to get the ball into the hands of their most prolific play-maker. Barkley will be the focal point, and running the ball will be an essential part of the game plan. In the past four games, Barkley has touched the ball more than 20 times on the ground in three of them. Before that, he had only touched the ball more than 20 times once.

Beckham received medical advice in regard to his quad bruise earlier in the week, which was precautionary according to head coach Pat Shurmur. Clearly, the star wide-out is dealing with something a bit more painful than expected.

It’s possible the Giants decide to sit him down for the remainder of the season, unless they can manage to get one step closer to a potential playoff berth.

The New York Giants won’t have one of their top offensive players in today’s game with the Washington Redskins, as receiver Odell Beckham Jr. is out with an injury. The injury in question is bruised quadriceps, and while a decision was put off until the day before the game, Beckham was finally ruled out and will not play.

INJURY UPDATE: @OBJ has been ruled Out for #NYGvsWAS.
Beckham appeared on the #NYGiants injury report with a bruised quadriceps and practiced on a limited basis. It was determined this morning he would not play in tomorrow’s game. pic.twitter.com/J5iAKQVwRP

— New York Giants (@Giants) December 8, 2018

It’s a big loss in a game where some favor the Giants to win partially because of Washington’s own injury troubles, which saw quarterbacks Alex Smith and Colt McCoy go down with injuries in the weeks leading up to this matchup.

The reaction to this has been mixed, but as you can see by looking at fan replies to the team’s official announcement, there’s a couple of different camps: those that believe it will lead to a bigger day for Saquon Barkley, who is coming off of a great game, and those who think that the Giants will certainly lose and perhaps benefit by gaining a better draft position with the loss.

Beckham has just over 1,000 yards receiving this season and has played in every game so far. With four games left in the season, and six touchdowns, it’s still possible that Beckham reaches double-digit touchdowns again as he’s done in every year of his career except for 2017, when he was injured for most of the season. However, being out of the Washington game means that Beckham will only have three games to get four more touchdowns.

The Giants may lean more on their running game because of this and fortunately, Saquon Barkley is coming off of a 125 yard performance against the Chicago Bears, which included 24 rushing attempts. It seems the Giants have been learning to utilize their star running back more as the season progresses. This time, however, they may not have much of a choice.

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.

Sunday featured a heartbreaking loss for the New York Giants, who went down to their rivals from Philadelphia after blowing a lead going into the second half. The team scored 19 points in the first half but couldn’t replicate the performance after halftime, ending the game with only three more points than they originally went into the locker room with.

Strangely, it happened partly because they didn’t use Saquon Barkley as much in the second half, despite the running back looking set to have a big day. The fact has been pointed out by all corners of the fanbase as evidence that head coach Pat Shurmur doesn’t quite know what he’s doing, but it seems even some players on the team are dissatisfied with the offensive playcalling in the second half.

Even influential players like Odell Beckham Jr. Beckham’s comments referred to the Eagles secondary rather than the ground game, but were still about the playcalling and the lack of a real effort to take the initiative and go after the defense.

“Knowing they were struggling [with injuries] in the secondary, personally I would’ve loved to attack them. But that wasn’t in our game plan,” Beckham said after the game. Beckham led the team in both receptions and receiving yards with 5 catches and 85 yards, but couldn’t catch the ball in the end zone for a play that could have won the game for the Giants.

Beckham did have a chance to do that near the end of the game, and it appeared that his jersey had been pulled by the cornerback on the play, which ended as an incompletion. It looked like a missed call, and when the referee didn’t throw the flag for pass interference, the Giants were robbed of a chance to move closer and have a fresh set of tries to get the ball in for a score.

The Giants wouldn’t have been in a position where they needed a touchdown on that drive, however, if they had made better adjustments. Philadelphia’s superior adjustments at halftime were also mentioned by Beckham. “They came out and made their adjustments and they just made better adjustments than we did. They ran better plays. They made the plays.”

The coaching staff is really the only area you can point fingers at after this. Hopefully, this game is one bad outing that can be used as an example of what not to do in the future, rather than an indication of the skill or lack thereof in that department.