Pro sports are unforgiving. Between the wear on your psyche from the constant scrutiny and pressure to perform and the wear on your body from grueling season after grueling season, it can be hard for most to last more than a few years. Many sports stars burn bright, but not for very long. This is especially the case in the NFL, a league known as much for its crippling hits and pressure cooker locker rooms as for its triumphs. A trip through the annals of National Football League history will produce a laundry list of heroes of yesterday whose reign barely lasted a few seasons. It’s a league that will chew you up, spit you out, and pick you up and chew you again.
But like anything else, there are always the outliers. Those select few players who — by sheer force of will, level of talent or some combination therein — find a way to persevere. These are players with a dynamic force so great that it can’t be stopped. Will there be coaching controversy? Sure. Contract disputes? It’s a business. Injuries? Of course, they’re human. But, like Jonah emerging from the belly of the whale, players like this will always find their way out the other end. Because they’re true stars. The kind whose light spills out of the back of the end zone and into the broader world.
In the world of pro football, there have been few athletes in the last decade who fit the true star billing quite as well as Odell Beckham Jr. Raised in New Orleans, the son of a mother who was an NCAA champion sprinter and a father who was a standout running back at LSU, Beckham had all the trappings of a promising athletic career. Still, when the Giants selected the receiver with the 12th pick in the 2014 NFL Draft, few could have predicted the stratospheric rise that would follow.
In his first season, despite missing the first four games with a hamstring injury, Beckham racked up an astonishing 91 catches for 1,305 yards, tying Michael Irvin’s record, at that time, for most consecutive games with 90 or more receiving yards. It wasn’t just how many catches he was making; it was how he was making them — leaping into the air, contorting his body at impossible angles, only occasionally feeling the need to use both hands. I’ll spare you another sermon on “The Catch,” the one that completely defied all known understandings of physics, the one that continues to be replayed over and over again all these years later. It was an athletic achievement so astounding it prompted the Pro Football Hall of Fame to place Beckham’s game-worn jersey on display less than a month later. But, suffice it to say, the guy made an immediate impression.
During his tenure in New York, Beckham would amass over 1,000 receiving yards in four different seasons, win NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year, be named to two All Pro teams, get selected for three Pro Bowls and blossom into a global superstar. He was a revelation.
As a football star, Beckham was a new proposition. He strayed from the familiar archetype. He wasn’t the hard-nosed meathead or the slick-talking trickster. He had a new kind of swag. He wore his hair in a bleach blonde mohawk. When he scored, he would dance, and not just a little jig, he would really move. He liked fashion. He had custom cleats made to look like Nike Air More Uptempo basketball sneakers. He wore a $189,500 Swiss watch during a game. A new paradigm was being set. Now, entering what will be his 11th season in the NFL, Beckham still believes he can change the game. “This is something that I dedicated my whole life to. I could have played other sports, whatever it was, but I chose this one or [it] chose me,” he told us.
And we had to ask: Why did the Super Bowl champion — someone who has eked more fame and notoriety out of an NFL career than perhaps anyone ever — still hope to suit up this season?
Beckham’s most recent chapter has been a rocky one. After leaving New York, Beckham struggled with injuries during much of his two-and-a-half-year stint with the Cleveland Browns. He made a strong rebound with the Los Angeles Rams in 2021, leading them through the playoffs only to get injured again in the second quarter of their historic Super Bowl victory. After a year in a supporting role for the Baltimore Ravens and then most recently a season in Miami where he barely saw the field, it was looking as if Beckham’s illustrious day in the sun might’ve been coming to a close.
However, the receiver told us he isn’t ready to close this chapter. “I want to be able to tell my son that, you know, you start something, you got to finish it. That’s what my pops and my mom instilled in me.”
Beckham is probably as well-positioned as any athlete for post-career success, but he told us he’s not done chasing the feeling that competing at the highest level gives him. He likens it to something race car driver Sonny Hayes, played by Brad Pitt, said in one of his recent favorite films F1: “He was talking about that feeling of flying. Like when you’re out there, it’s like all the hard work and everything you practice for… You know, it’s just for the moment of you doing your thing — like just doing your thing. The thing that not a lot of people in this world can do.”
Beckham is excited for the future of the league. He said he can already feel his influence among the younger generation of players who have come in his wake. He recalled a moment he had with star Cowboys receiver CeeDee Lamb this past offseason. “We was in Paris and I’ll never forget. [CeeDee]’s like, ‘Hey, bro, I want to give you flowers. You changed the game forever. Like you see me now? You made me want to express myself and try shit.”
For Beckham, the future is bright on the field and off. It’s just a matter of where he’s choosing to direct his energies. “I always felt that I was a person who had light. I always, you know, felt like I was chosen by God. So I just know that after football, I’m going to always be straight,” he said. “It’s just about establishing this for now.” In Beckham we trust.
