What do you do when you’re the owner of a team who’s currently 1-5, 0-3 at home, with a QB who is light years past his prime, who also just signed possibly their best player to a $95m contract? You put your leadership hat on, calm everyone down and let everyone know that the darkness is always darkest before the dawn. That’s exactly what Giants owner John Mara was going for here.
Mara knows his players, so he knows that the consistently level headed Odell Beckham Jr. will respond to this in stride and go out there on Sunday and play his heart out for the organization he deeply loves while keeping his emotions in check for the entire game. That’s actually what he’s known for. He’s definitely not known for squaring up on inanimate objects and giving them the old on-two or surprising them with a headbutt.
I’m also very confident that the rest of the Giants’ team is appreciative of their owner telling the public that Beckham needs to create more headlines with his play on the field instead of creating headlines by talking. No chance that they think to themselves that Mara should create more headlines by owning rather than creating headlines by talking to the media. No way they or anyone else would ever think of the headlines Mara made a few years ago about the time he decided to keep a player on his team that admitted to him that he abused his wife often.
Yep, people are going to look back to this moment as the moment that set in motion the ascension of the 2018 New York Giants. I can’t see this excellent judgement call by the John Mara being nothing short of the catalyst that propels the G-Men to a major playoff push. That, or these comments destroy the locker room even more than it already is and Beckham demands a trade or something outlandish like that as the Giants prepare on if they’re taking a QB with the first pick in the 2019 draft.
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