“I never wanted to leave the Giants”: Odell Beckham Jr.’s confession 6 years too late

Even now, Odell Beckham Jr.’s shock departure form the New York Giants is still a big talking point among NFL fans.

Why did he leave? Was he forced out? What’s certain is that after five successful seasons with the Giants, which included three Pro Bowl nods, few were expecting him to move on.

In August 2018 Beckham signed a huge five-year contract extension with the Giants, worth up to $95 million. But in the following March he and Olivier Vernon were traded to the Cleveland Browns in exchange for Jabrill Peppers, Kevin Zeitler and first- and third-round picks in the 2019 NFL Draft.

Speaking in recent days, Beckham insisted that he had been eager to stay with the Giants despite the team’s poor form in 2018.

“I never, ever wanted to leave the New York Giants,” Beckham said on CBS’ Champions League final coverage. “The reason you heard me talking about what was going on was because I was pissed because, where I come from in college, if we lost one game, our season was over.”

But there is evidence to suggest that Beckham wasn’t entirely happy in New York. A interview from 2019 suggests that Beckham went willingly and that he was glad to leave.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Beckham said, when asked why he was leaving the Giants. “I just can’t do it. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t in a good place. And like I told you earlier, I feel like everything is about happiness, and I just was not.”

In terms of his personal performances, Beckham would never return to the levels that he reached in those first first seasons with the Giants. But he did finally pick up a championship ring as a part of the Los Angeles Rams team that triumphed at Super Bowl LVI, scoring the first touchdown in a narrow 23-20 win.

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