NEW YORK — Buckle up.
Odell Beckham Jr.’s free-agent tour starts Thursday with the Giants. He is scheduled to fly into the area Thursday morning.
Giants receiver Sterling Shepard said his goal is to convince his good friend Beckham to cancel his other scheduled visits with the Buffalo Bills on Friday and the Dallas Cowboys on Monday.
“I want to try to keep him here, yeah,” Shepard said at his locker Wednesday with a smile. “That’s gonna be the plan.”
Beckham even has plans to stop by Shepard’s house to see his friends’ daughters. Shepard and Saquon Barkley both said they’d spoken to OBJ as recently as Tuesday.
So maybe Shepard and Barkley could lock all the doors like the 2015 Los Angeles Clippers did with DeAndre Jordan until Beckham agrees to sign.
All jokes aside, though, while Beckham would improve this team, he is not the offensive weapon the Giants need right now to get going.
Barkley is.
A healthy Beckham would add a desperately needed No. 1 wide receiver to Daniel Jones’ receiving corps. But his presence would not change the Giants’ blueprint for winning games on offense: by riding Barkley as their focal point.
Right now, the Giants are short on answers for how to get Barkley going with three losses in their last four games and Washington on deck.
“That’s one of the reasons we’re going [with] pads,” Brian Daboll said before Tuesday’s rare padded practice. “Let’s work a little bit on the running game.”
Barkley carried the ball a career-high 35 times for 152 yards for an average of 4.34 yards per rush in a Week 10 win over the Houston Texans, the worst team in the NFL.
But his total rushing numbers in the Giants’ three recent losses are alarming: 46 carries for 114 yards, averaging 2.47 yards per carry and 38 rushing yards per game against the Seattle Seahawks, Detroit Lions and Cowboys.
Daboll needs to fix this yesterday, because these two games against Washington in the next three weeks will be decided in the trenches.
Rookie Commanders running back Brian Robinson Jr. is coming off an 18-carry win over the Atlanta Falcons for a career-high 105 rushing yards.
And the Giants’ defense is third-worst in the NFL in rush yards before contact (3.15) and fourth-worst in rush yards after contact (2.01), per ESPN.
“It’s a battle of the big guys,” Giants defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence said of Sunday’s playoff-like NFC East clash. “I feel like it’s that every week, personally. That’s how I take it, and I’m accepting the challenge. I know my guys around me are accepting the challenge, and our offensive line is accepting the challenge.”
Giants GM Joe Schoen’s challenge, meanwhile, will be to find enough loose change in the couch cushions to make Beckham a reasonable offer.
Those who know Beckham believe that the receiver’s decision could come down to the best financial offer, since he’s already narrowed his list down to postseason hopefuls.
The Cowboys reportedly could offer Beckham a multi-year contract if the money is reasonable, per CBS insider Josina Anderson.
Shepard admitted “I don’t really have much say on the business side of it” and he’ll have to let Beckham “do what he do[es].” He and Barkley don’t badger him about his career. But they’ve done a great job recruiting to this point.
Barkley spoke to OBJ about a possible Giants reunion at Beckham’s birthday party in early November. Shepard said Schoen and Daboll “have picked a lot of brains in the building” about Beckham. And Shepard couldn’t contain his enthusiasm Wednesday.
“Shoot, I would love to have him here,” he said. “He became my brother over the years and one of my main dogs. He’s sacrificed a lot to be wherever I need him to be, and vice versa. So I would love to have him with me again. That would be great.”
Those who know Beckham say he would love to come home to New York, too.
Wide receiver David Sills smirked when asked what his price would be for Beckham to have the No. 13 again.
“I don’t got a price,” Sills said. “I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
Daboll remained tight-lipped, other than confirming Beckham will visit Thursday, on a Giants players off day. He wouldn’t discuss if they were taking him to dinner or how important Beckham’s physical will be after rehabbing his second left ACL tear.
“We’ll cover that later,” Daboll said of OBJ, seemingly foreshadowing a day when he’ll discuss it.
Daniel Jones typically comes to the Giants’ facility on off days, so he will no doubt meet Beckham during his visit.
And wouldn’t you know, on the eve of OBJ’s visit, the Giants played a boatload of practice songs by Drake, Beckham’s favorite artist.
Apparently that was just a coincidence, and the staff had reverted to an old playlist after misplacing the iPad they normally use to cue up their tunes.
It’s hard to believe in coincidences these days in East Rutherford, though, where old could become new again.
