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Odell Beckham Is Criticized by Jerry Reese and Ben McAdoo After Giants’ Loss
By BILL PENNINGTONJAN. 9, 2017

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Giants quarterback Eli Manning, Coach Ben McAdoo and General Manager Jerry Reese each censured wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. in some manner Monday, a day after the Giants were eliminated from the N.F.L. playoffs in a 38-13 loss to the Packers.

The tipping point may have been Beckham’s punching a hole in a Sheetrock wall near the visitors’ locker room after Sunday’s game at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis. Reese was most emphatic about how he wanted Beckham to alter his behavior.

“He is a smart guy, but sometimes he doesn’t do smart things,” Reese said. “We all have had to grow up at different times in our lives, and I think it is time for him to do that. He has been here for three years now and is a little bit of a lightning rod because of what he does on the football field. But the things he does off the football field, he has to be responsible for those things.”

Reese continued, “Everybody knows that he is a gifted player, but there are some things that he has done that he needs to look at himself in the mirror and be honest with himself about.”

McAdoo was more focused on the damage to the wall.

“There’s a hole in the wall at Lambeau Field — we take full responsibility; I take full responsibility,” McAdoo said. “It’s no way to carry yourself after a ballgame.”

Manning said he thought Beckham might have been pressing on Sunday, possibly because of the controversy caused by his trip to Miami with teammates a week before the Green Bay game.


“He wanted to go out there and have the best game of his career — maybe he put too much pressure on himself,” Manning said. “Unfortunately, going to the playoffs is different. We didn’t have a lot of people that have been to the playoffs. You hate to say that it’s a learning experience, but sometimes guys just have to go through it and see what it’s like.”

Manning said that in his 13 seasons he had learned not to exaggerate anything about an approaching playoff game, and he conceded that the Miami trip also changed the postgame narrative for Beckham.

“You just have to learn the perception of things makes it different,” Manning said. “If you do things, you have to back it up. I don’t think it had an impact on the game. I thought we had a great week of practice. Unfortunately, we just didn’t have it yesterday.

“Odell is going to be fine. He’s learning every year, and this is another learning experience for him.”

Beckham was not available to reporters in the Giants’ locker room Monday.

Defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, who missed the last several games because of surgery for a sports hernia, said he had expected to play in the next playoff round if the Giants had defeated the Packers. Pierre-Paul, who signed a one-year contract last off-season after having lost part of his right hand in a 2015 fireworks accident, and who will soon become a free agent, said he would was now looking for a lengthy new deal and would not sign another one-year contract.

“I’ve proved myself; I’ve shown what I can do,” said Pierre-Paul, who had seven sacks and 53 total tackles in 12 games this season. “There’s not really a guy like me out here doing it with seven and a half fingers.”

Finally, while Reese praised Manning for his play this season, he was asked whether the team needed to consider drafting another quarterback. “Eli is 36,” Reese said, “and we have started to think about who is the next quarterback, and who is in line. So we will look into that as we move into the off-season.”

Extra Points

A Giants team spokesman rebutted “in the strongest terms possible” a published report that players had caused damage to the interior of their chartered jet on the team flight back to the New York metropolitan area Sunday night.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/09/sports/football/new-york-giants-odell-beckham-eli-manning-ben-mcadoo-jerry-reese.html?