#Pat Shurmur sabotaged my Giants career

Odell Beckham Jr. has been gone from New York for nearly two seasons, but he’s still talking about his days with the Giants.

The injured Cleveland Browns receiver believed he would play his entire NFL career for the Giants, but OBJ intimated that then-coach Pat Shurmur undermined his final two seasons with the team.

“It just felt like I was coming to the end of a road and I was pushing for something that wasn’t tangible. And that was where it all went haywire,” Beckham said this week on the “All Things Covered” podcast with Patrick Peterson and Bryant McFadden.  “We got a new coach in there, and I feel like that’s a situation I can be honest now, because people have come out, like anonymous coaches, when we know who it really was.

“I felt betrayed in a sense that this coach tried to turn me against my brothers and my coaches and was telling the young guys to stay away from me because I’m not a good person or not a good team (player) or role model or this and that.”

Beckham was traded two seasons into a five-year contract worth $90 million, ending a tumultuous five-year stint with the Giants punctuated by highlight-reel plays and record-setting offensive numbers but various controversies on and off the field.

The three-time Pro Bowler was fined by the team in Oct. 2018 after making questionable comments in an ESPN interview in which he openly criticized Shurmur and quarterback Eli Manning.

“I know I got a lot of s—t when I talked bad on Eli and I never once said a bad thing. If anything, I just speak the truth,” Beckham said on the podcast. “The only thing I can look back on and be like ‘Man, I regret saying that’ is saying he’s not the same player, even though it’s the truth.”

The 28-year-old Beckham also doesn’t believe the Giants’ front office and coaching staff properly constructed and utilized the team’s roster to maximize Manning’s final seasons in the league.

“I will tell you where I ran into trouble,” Beckham said. “It was when I felt like we had the pieces. We know that Eli [was] a little older. I felt like they never put people around Eli.  I’ve been here now, I’ve given you two seasons. I’ve shown you what I’m capable of. I can hoop.  

“And I felt like they never put people around Eli. It bothered me because I felt like they never built around him. And we just kept drafting, we were drafting not like building an organization…You know, we were just never good. I ran into that problem, bro, when I felt like they weren’t growing and evolving as an organization. Like, I wasn’t winning. I hated losing that bad. Great, I was having great seasons. But I hated losing. I hated it. Hated it.”

The Giants posted only one winning season and a 31-49 overall record during Beckham’s tenure. They reached the playoffs with an 11-5 mark in 2016, but in the lone postseason game of his seven-year career, Beckham was held to four receptions on 28 yards in a 38-13 loss at Green Bay.

“I never thought I would play for another team besides the Giants,” Beckham said. “I never wanted to win a championship for anybody more than the Giants, bro. It was just such a legendary place. I was very proud to be a part of that organization.”

Beckham amassed over 1,000 receiving yards for the fifth time in his first season in Cleveland and appeared in six games this season before suffering a torn ACL early in the Browns’ Week 7 game against Cincinnati.

Led by quarterback Baker Mayfield, the Browns are 9-3 for the first time since 1994 and have clinched their first winning season since 2007.