Tom Coughlin Explains Why He Kept Odell Beckham Jr. In The Game

Odell Beckham Jr. should have been ejected after his helmet-to-helmet hit Josh Norman. He wasn’t, for reasons known only to the officiating crew. But he was actively hurting the Giants with penalties, and wasn’t getting anything done on the field (just one reception for three yards at the time), and Tom Coughlin could justifiably have benched him. Why didn’t he? A few reasons.

At his press conference this afternoon (note that this was before Batghazi broke, and before the NFL announced a one-game suspension for Beckham), the Giants coach gave a couple different answers to explain why Beckham remained in the game.

That second tweet contains two different, maybe slightly contradictory justifications—I didn’t notice Beckham melting down, also it was good for him to learn how to deal with melting down—but it’s the very first that’s the truest and really the only one that matters. Beckham is really, really good at football, and few coaches would willingly take him out before the game was officially out of hand.

At the time, you could easily have argued that benching Beckham would have been better both for the team and for his odds of avoiding a suspension, and that leaving him in was very unlikely to have any practical benefit. But against the odds, Coughlin wagered correctly: not only did Beckham avoid further flag trouble, but the Giants came all the way back from 28 points down to tie the game, and Beckham played a big part in that comeback.

Coughlin said he hasn’t spoken 1-on-1 with Beckham yet, but he’d prefer that his WR cut this shit out in the future.

Beckham still hasn’t talked much about Sunday, but Josh Norman can’t stop talking about it. On with Mike & Mike this morning, Norman said that Beckham’s attempts to get in (Context: Norman has referred to himself as Batman. Not that type of bat, though.)

“That man had the Joker cleats on, he knew what he was doing. That man knows what he was doing. That’s no Joker, man, that’s no Joker. That’s Harvey Dent, that’s Two-Face. That’s who he is.”